


All the Dreaded Cards Foretell

by SylvanWitch



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-03
Updated: 2012-05-03
Packaged: 2017-11-04 18:05:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/396683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to "Boy Falling Out of the Sky."  The honeymoon is over.  It's not always easy being brothers and lovers.  When a carnival comes to town, the boys find themselves on a case that hits far too close to home.  Can their love survive this first and frightening test?</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Dreaded Cards Foretell

**Author's Note:**

> My 2010 SPN_J2_BigBang entry and a sequel to "Boy Falling Out of the Sky." Sam is sixteen in this fic.

Every high school student in America has the same routine on a Friday afternoon. 

 

The ritual might vary by degree, but it’s more or less identical everywhere:  a constant susurrus of minor disruptions building to a wave of whispering, all of which anticipates the eruption out of seats when the dismissal bell rings.

 

The routine doesn’t seem to differ, no matter if that dismissal is earlier in the day, like in Texas, or later, as it usually is in Illinois, if Sam remembers that right.

  
Maybe it was Iowa.

  
One of the “I” states, anyway.

 

Except not Indiana, which is where he is now.  Orchard Ridge, Indiana, population 2,347, less four werewolves, two witches, and one extremely nasty poltergeist, though Sam guesses the town probably hadn’t counted that last one for some time.

 

Since Orchard Ridge High School is his fourth in four quarters and his junior transcript was starting to resemble a NASA calculation, he’d managed to talk Dad into staying local so he could finish the year here.

 

It’s not that Sam especially likes Orchard Ridge.  Really, he could take it or leave it.  But he’s kind of gotten used to knowing the street names, the cafeteria menu, and a few of his classmates. 

 

Plus, the house Dad chose for short-term lease has only two bedrooms, which means he and Dean share.

 

Lately, that’s been an exercise in extreme frustration.  Sam forgets to keep the sigh in and catches a dirty look from Mrs. Ramsey, who’s chosen the last period on a Friday afternoon to introduce titration, which Sam keeps mishearing as “titillation,” a problem his classmates seem also to share, since there’s rampant giggling breaking out in the third of the room closest to the exit.

 

At long last, the bell rings, and Sam can make his escape, hearing Mrs. Ramsey’s admonition about the Chapter 10 quiz on Monday and about the AP review test that’s due next Friday.

 

“Man, what was I thinking taking four APs,” Jason Werner says, trudging up to the locker next to Sam’s and dropping his book bag.

 

Sam feels the floor shake a little at the impact.

 

He nods sympathetically and selects the books for the weekend, careful to stow the SAT prep book on the bottom of the bag, under three metric tons of Chemistry, Calculus AB, and Latin texts. 

 

“You takin’ the SATs next week?”

 

“Yeah,” Sam answers absently, trying to remember if _The Catcher in the Rye_ made it to Indiana with him or if he needs to swing by the school library on the way out and pick up a copy.  They’ve got a reading test on Wednesday. 

 

Thanks to his transient status and profoundly unoriginal curricula, Sam’s read it three times already.  But it can’t hurt to refresh his memory.

“Did you do alright on the PSATs?”

 

Sam has to stop and think about that.  Where was he in the fall of his sophomore year?  Did he ever get those scores?  They must be in his record somewhere.

 

Sam shrugs and equivocates.  “Yeah, I guess.”

 

“You goin’ to the May Dance?”

 

By now, Sam’s got his backpack slung over one shoulder and has closed his locker.  He gives Jason his full attention and tries not to laugh in the guy’s face.

  
He’s not a bad kid.  A little nerdy, a little clingy, but decent enough.  And he’s been a great lab partner.

 

“No.  Are you?”

 

Jason ducks his head and snorts, “As if.”

 

“No date?”

 

This earns Sam a scornful look, and he puts his hands up in placation.

  
“You never know, man.  You’ve got a whole week to ask someone.  And stranger things have happened.”

 

_For example, I fuck my brother on a regular basis.  Or I would, if my father would go on a hunt and leave Dean at home instead of taking him along every goddamned time._

 

“Like what?”  By the way he inflects it, it’s clear Jason has already asked Sam the question once.

 

“Oh, you know.  Like…”

 

Every single example Sam can think of that doesn’t involve having sex with Dean instead requires the kind of explaining his father forbids.  And earns white jackets with straps and colorful pills in little paper cups.

 

“I don’t know.  Point is, you shouldn’t give up hope.  There’s someone out there for you.”

 

Where this voice of romantic wisdom is coming from, Sam hasn’t a fucking clue.  It’s not like he’s dated a lot.  Or at all.  His steadiest relationship is with his brother.  Before that, it was with his right hand.

 

“Anyway, it’s probably going to be lame.”

 

Jason seems satisfied with that logic, and nods vigorously, shouldering his own backpack and bracing one hand against his closed locker as he balances the weight.

 

“Yeah,” Jason concurs, a hint of pre-emptive gloating in his tone.  “It’ll probably have streamers and fruit punch and all that crap.”

 

“Definitely,” Sam agrees, thinking, _How did I end up in a John Hughes movie?_

“You goin’ to the Festival?”

 

Jason says this like there’s only one real answer, so Sam lies, “Yeah, wouldn’t miss it.”

 

Fact is, a small-town spring festival isn’t remotely interesting to Sam.  The thought of wandering through sad concession stands and games designed to cheat idiots out of their hard-earned money makes him roll his eyes.  He’d rather do calc homework.

 

“Well, I’ll see you there, then.” 

 

“Yeah, see you.”

 

Sam watches Jason stagger onto a school bus, grateful when that bus pulls away to reveal the Impala parked across the street from the school, Dean leaning against the driver’s side quarter panel. 

 

Sam doesn’t show it by even so much as a missed step, but the sight of Dean in tee-shirt and jeans, arms crossed, shades on, coolly assessing the huddles of kids in front of the high school, looking for Sam, makes his heart skip and lurch in his chest.

 

As he makes his way through weekend plan conversations, an impromptu game of Frisbee, two girls shrieking loudly about some guy named Christian, Sam sees a couple of girls he know giving Dean appreciative looks.  A group of bolder girls out near the curb are unmistakably flirting.

 

Dean’s wearing a smile that says he knows he’s being watched, but when he catches sight of Sam, Dean’s look somehow narrows on Sam alone.  Despite the shades and the _I’m-awesome_ posture, Dean’s all for Sam.

 

Sam looks right back, smiling widely and trying not to let anything show that shouldn’t, at least before they’re out of sight of the school.

 

They’ve got a place they go when they can take advantage of the usual excuses—errands or extra-curricular stuff or a run to the next town’s bigger library.  At the end of an untended road that leads into Veteran’s Park, there’s a circle of beaten grass where generations of tires have parked, nose out, giving the cars’ occupants an illusion of privacy.

 

That isn’t enough for Sam and Dean, who have a pretty recognizable ride and are universally understood to be brothers, so they always get out, trek back into the woods, to an abandoned deer stand, planks spongy but not rotted through, precariously perched against the wide bole of an old oak tree.

 

Here they can risk a few minutes of hasty, breathless kissing, rough hand-jobs, jeans unzipped only as far as they dare, or the rare blowjob further back in the trees, one of them standing, the other crouched uncomfortably to keep from staining his knees.

 

It isn’t ideal, and they can’t manage it every day.  People would get suspicious if their car were always parked there, empty.

 

Dad would notice, too, if they were gone that long that often.

 

Still, it’s better than nothing.

 

It’s so much more than nothing, Sam thinks, Dean’s hand on him, bringing him to immediate hardness, broken encouragement mingling with curses in his ear, “Fuck, Sam, you’re so hard.  Fuck, Sammy, come for me.  Come for me, Sammy.  C’mon.  C’mon.”

 

Sam can’t stifle the scream, so he buries his face in Dean’s collar instead, resisting the urge to bite his brother, leave a mark he won’t be able to explain away.

 

Dean wipes Sam’s sensitive skin off quickly with an old tee-shirt they’ve taken to stowing in the tree stand in a plastic bag held in place by a rock.  Then he tucks Sam away and sucks his tongue into his mouth, moaning and urging Sam’s hand toward his own fly.

 

Sam loves this part, loves the way Dean needs him, the way he surges up under Sam’s touch like he’ll fly apart with the feeling, loves the girth of Dean’s hard flesh and the smell of him.  He wants to put his mouth around Dean and make his brother shout, but he doesn’t, promising himself that there’ll be time enough later, though when he isn’t sure.

 

When Dean’s done, his shudders reduced to minute jerks, Sam cleans Dean up carefully, eyes on the flush in Dean’s cheeks and the way his lips are parted as he tries to slow his breathing. 

 

Sam puts the cloth away while Dean does the same for himself, and then they sit side by side, legs dangling over the side of the stand, thighs pressed together, a line of warmth along his left side.

 

“Dad’s got a job for us,” Dean says.  “I’ll be back Sunday night, though.”

 

“Dean, c’mon.  That’s the third weekend in a row you’ve been gone.  Can’t you get out of it?”

 

Dean shifts, and Sam feels the loss of his brother’s heat, a draft of cold air all along the side where they’d been touching just before.

 

“Sam, you know I have to go with him.  He’ll get suspicious if I always stay home.  He’ll want to know why I’ve suddenly stopped wanting to hunt.”

 

“Bullshit, Dean.  You’ve gone on practically every hunt he’s asked you on since Minnesota.  Don’t you want to—“

 

Sam stops himself, not wanting to sound needy, not wanting Dean to call him a girl, like he so often does when Sam expresses his feelings like this.

 

“You know it’s not that,” Dean’s quick to say, voice low, intense with meaning he’ll never give actual words to.

 

“Then stay home, Dean.  C’mon.”

 

“Can’t, Sammy.  I already told him I’d go.  I don’t have a good enough excuse.”

 

“Fine,” Sam says, but it’s more resigned than sulky, and Dean bumps shoulders with him before heading for the planks nailed to the tree trunk like a drunken ladder.

 

“I’ll make it up to you, Sam, I promise.  I’ve got a surprise planned for your birthday.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

If he sounds suspicious, he figures he’s earned it.  His birthday is a week from Sunday, and so far, Dean’s track record for being around on weekends is pretty dismal.

 

But Dean only says, “Yeah,” voice teasing, and Sam has to be content with trusting his brother.

 

Stifling a sigh, he follows Dean back to the Impala.  The drive back to their little rented house on Maple Lane is uneventful, the sight that greets them when they walk through the kitchen door unsurprising—Dad at the table, weapons on an oily old tablecloth spread out like an obscene feast before him.

 

“You ready?” he asks Dean before even looking at Sam.

  
Dean nods and heads toward their shared bedroom.

  
And without warning, Sam’s suddenly angry, full of rage at their father’s indifference to Sam’s desires, never mind that John can’t know what they are, not ever, not if Sam wants to go on living.

 

Maybe mad, too, at being left behind and alone, or at not being asked to go along, though he’s never much cared about that before.

 

Whatever the case, the next thing out of his mouth takes the shape of a lie, and he can’t seem to stop himself from saying it.

  
“Maybe you should let Dean stay home this time, Dad.”

 

John’s eyes come up from his work, though his hands continue reassembling the gun without the benefit of sight.

 

“Why’s that, Sam?”  Dad’s got that careful tone he wears a lot with Sam these days, like he’s just waiting for Sam to say something that’s going to piss him off.

 

“The guidance counselor called me down today, made some noise about my needing a more constant presence in the home.”

 

John’s hands still, and something changes in his eyes, and Sam wonders if he’s gone one lie too far.

 

“How’s your guidance counselor know what goes on at our home, Sam?  You been talkin’ to her?”

 

Sam shakes his head, swallows nervously, wishing now he hadn’t started this at all.

  
“No, of course not.  I know better.  I guess she might have heard it from around the school?  You know a couple of the kids in my class live right down the street.”

 

Caitlyn and Marilee Asbrun don’t know that Sam Winchester exists and wouldn’t admit to living on the same street even if they were confronted with postal evidence.  They have the big house on the corner, a three storey Victorian monstrosity done up to within an inch of its painted lady life with gingerbread and a purple palette that might have made even Liberaci sick.

 

But Dad doesn’t know that.

“What business is it of theirs what we do around here?”

 

Sam swallows a sigh and shrugs.  “I don’t know.  Maybe it’s not them.  I’m just saying, people talk.  It’s a small town.  You know how they are.”

 

And that’s apparently the right card to play.  John’s hands go back to working seconds before his eyes once again shift into thoughtfulness rather than suspicion.

 

When he nods absently without saying anything, Sam knows he’s gotten through, and a minute later, when Dean comes in with his duffle, Dad says, “You’re gonna sit this one out, Dean.  Gotta put up appearances for Sam’s school.  Stick around town, maybe go to the festival, put in some face time so people see Sam’s not alone here.  Got it?”

 

“Yessir,” Dean answers automatically, but his eyes are all for Sam.  Sam tries to hold Dean’s gaze, which is sharp with knowing, and he manages it through stubborn defiance though it makes his belly flip anxiously.

 

Without another word, Dean pivots on his heel and heads back up the hall to their room.  Sam follows with slow steps, dreading what’s going to come next.

 

But Dean doesn’t confront or accuse him, only brushes by him with a, “What do you want for dinner?”

 

Sam breathes out a sigh of relief and says, “Whatever you want is fine.”

 

Over the remains of a pizza, Dad present only in the lingering scent of gun oil in the kitchen, Dean says, “So this guidance counselor…she hot?”

 

Behind the usual crude humor something else is lurking, and Sam does his best to sit still, to keep Dean’s eyes, to avoid telegraphing the discomfort Dean’s suspicion raises.

 

Is it so wrong to want to spend time together?

 

He knows he’s rationalizing even as he stands up, clears their plates and the table, and then stops behind Dean’s chair, leaning into his brother so that his groin brushes the nape of Dean’s neck.

 

“You want somethin’, Sammy?” Dean’s voice has dropped an octave, and Sam can feel himself responding physically before the word, “Dessert,” even leaves his mouth.

  
Dean barks a laugh, shakes his head.  “Line like that doesn’t deserve an answer, Sam.  You sure you’re my brother?”

 

He’s on his feet now, facing Sam, and Sam feels the sharp twang of nerves as he licks his lips, more nervous habit than seduction, and says, “More than that, Dean.”

 

They don’t usually talk about it.  It’s not that they ignore the brother thing.  That’s hard to do with Dad around all the time, and besides, they’ve been brothers way longer than they’ve been lovers.  It’s just an unspoken agreement that they’ll let it go, not dwell on it.

 

It doesn’t matter to them what other people think.  That’s what Sam always tells himself when he imagines what the guys in gym class would say if they knew who really gave him that monster hickey a couple of weeks ago.

 

As it is, Lindsey Bellweather’s reputation is suffering instead.  She’d had the misfortune of flirting with Sam in the cafeteria the day before the hickey incident and everyone had leapt to conclusions.

 

So this is a pretty bold move.

 

By the way Dean’s eyes seem to darken and the wicked curl of his lip, Dean doesn’t seem upset by the reminder of their fraternal relationship.

 

“That right, little brother?” He says, closing the gap between them in a stalking stride that manages to be at once graceful and threatening.

  
Sam has to remind himself that he started this and only just manages to stand his ground as Dean stops with an inch between them.

 

A deep breath would bring their chests together, a single step rub the line of his cock against Dean’s thigh.

 

Dean doesn’t give that inch.

 

“Did you lie to Dad, Sam?”

 

Dean’s expression hasn’t changed, eyes still hot and dark with desire, and his tone is the same—low and rough, it arrows to his erection, making him painfully hard.

 

“N-no,” He says, but the lie is all there in the stutter, and he closes his eyes for a second against the flash of pain in Dean’s eyes.

 

Then Dean is kissing his mouth like he’d eat the words away, shoving him hard into the archway that leads from the kitchen down the hallway to their bedroom.

  
He can’t find breath to speak, can’t find a second to take back the lie before Dean’s on his knees, freeing Sam with work-roughened hands, wrapping one hand around him, hot and hard, while he sucks the head of Sam’s cock into his mouth.

 

Sam runs a hand frantically through Dean’s hair and bucks against his brother’s skillful mouth, wishing now he’d have just told the truth, and then losing the thread of thought as he takes in the sight of his brother, cheeks hollowed, lips spread wide around Sam’s shaft, eyes turned upward to take in Sam’s look.

 

His orgasm overtakes him suddenly, and he cries out, his knees giving even as Dean wraps an arm around the back of his thighs to hold him upright, milks the last of his seed out of him with sucking sounds that make Sam whimper and plead, like he’s got more to give if only Dean would give him a second to get his breath back.

 

Dean lowers him gently to the floor, the tile cold on his ass, the metal strip between kitchen and carpeted hallway uncomfortable, but Sam doesn’t care about that.  Dean is looming over him, looking down, face half hidden by shadows from the still-dark hall, only the amber light from the microwave over the stove giving any contour to Dean’s features, and then it’s like he’s carved from some rich wood.

 

Wrecked, still breathing hard, Sam looks up at his brother and feels tears hot behind his eyes.  God, he loves Dean.

 

Dean stands there for a breathing minute, like he’s made of stone, still fully clothed, though the evidence of his own need is clear in the stressed denim at his crotch.

 

“C’mon,” he says at last, in a wasted voice Sam’s only heard after they’ve both had mind-blowing orgasms.  Dean offers an impatient hand, and Sam takes it, feeling weightless for a second as the strength of his brother hauls him up.

  
Then he’s stumbling clumsily down the hall, pants around his calves hampering movement, following Dean’s shadow as he disappears into their room.

 

There, Sam erases his guilt and the last of the sickness in his stomach he earned by lying to Dean.  He wraps his mouth around his brother, takes all of him in, lets Dean’s grip on his hair wring tears from his eyes and pretends that the pain-pleasure is all that’s causing them.

 

He swallows what Dean looses on a string of broken curses, his brother’s hips surging under his hands, his brother’s seed searing a trail down the back of his throat, and he thinks, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry in rhythm with his brother’s weakening thrusts.

 

When they’re done, finally both naked, side by side and spent, Sam rests a hand on Dean’s stomach and is comforted when his brother covers it with one of his own.

 

It’s too narrow to sleep together comfortably on either of their beds, but Sam stays for a time, enjoying the heat of Dean’s body against his own all along one side, shivering a little every time Dean brushes his thumb over the thin skin of Sam’s inner wrist.

 

Dean drifts off for awhile, and Sam gets up, showers, pads out to the living room in sweats, tee-shirt, bare feet, to spend some time answer analogy problems from his test prep book.

 

When he hears Dean stirring, he puts it back in the bottom of his book-bag, lying to himself that he’s not hiding it.

 

Dean joins him in time to catch the last hour of _Top Gun_ , and they exchange cheesy lines and laugh at all the usual places.  Dean comments—as always—on Kelly McGillis’ rack, and Sam—like always—sighs and rolls his eyes.

 

By the end of the movie, they’re stretched out on the couch.  Sam’s tucked into the vee of his brother’s legs, one of Dean’s arms draped over him casually.

 

When the movie ends, Dean nuzzles the hair above Sam’s ear and breathes, “You ready for another round?”

 

Sam’s practically hard by the time he hears the question mark.

 

It’s a good night.

Saturdays are for sparring if Dean and Dad are home, for homework if they aren’t.

 

Apparently Saturdays are for sex if Dean is home and Dad isn’t, something Sam is glad to rediscover.

 

When they stagger out of bed and into the kitchen at noon, they’re seeking food and fluids, not necessarily in that order.

 

Dean has a love-mark in the shape of Sam’s teeth just above his right nipple.  Sam can see his handiwork because Dean’s shirtless, wearing a pair of Sam’s sweats—they were cleaner than any of Dean’s—that establishes for anyone interested that Dean’s going commando, at least until the laundry’s done.

 

He’s drinking straight from the orange juice container, throat moving in smooth, fluid rhythm, and Sam’s arrested in the middle of making coffee, scoop halfway to the basket, grind spilling onto the ugly burnt umber counter.

 

“Dude,” Dean says when he pauses for a full breath.  He gestures in the direction of the mess and guns the OJ carton toward the trash can.

 

“We should do laundry,” Sam observes, but not like he’s actually suggesting it.  He’s got plans for getting things dirtier, not otherwise.  
  
But surprisingly, Dean agrees, nodding and rubbing a hand through his hair.

 

“Yeah.  And then we’ll get dinner at the diner and head over to put in some people time at the festival.”

 

Sam groans.  “Seriously?”

 

Dean levels him a look that’s mostly teasing, though it’s got the edge of something else in it too.  Sam shifts uneasily and busies himself making toast.

 

“Gotta show people you have family, Sam.  Can’t have guidance worrying over your home life.”

 

He’s regretting in a different way the desperate gambit he’d used to keep Dean home, even if it has, so far, paid off in spades. 

 

“Dean, I—“ He starts, but his brother only hip-checks him, says, “Bring me some coffee, bitch,” and heads toward the bathroom.  Seconds later, Sam hears the shower come on.

 

Abandoning the toast to its dry and crusty fate, he scrambles to fix coffee for the both of them and heads for the bathroom himself. 

 

Two hours later, finally fed and more or less clean themselves, the trunk of the Impala loaded with enough dirty laundry to make it look like they’re plotting a body dump, they head out to get the tedious part of the weekend over with so that they can spend a little time mingling with the locals before spending a lot of time—Sam hopes—mingling other things.

 

Sam’s always found Laundromats good for getting work done, and despite Dean’s attempts to distract him—which are thankfully restricted to more public displays of brotherly affection, since the place is packed with people—he gets through the bulk of his assignments.  Dean teases him about being a geek, but he folds most of Sam’s laundry, too.

“Sit your ass back down and get your math done, Sam,” he says, using Sam’s boxers like a semaphore flag signaling Sam’s imminent surrender.

 

Sam smiles, trying not to put the love into it that he’s feeling, and goes back to his equations.

 

They load the car and head for home, Sam happy to be free for the rest of the weekend, Dean whistling at being done with the loathed laundry.

 

The diner plans are scuttled when they end up celebrating their chore completion with an impromptu sparring match that turns into naked wrestling.

  
Three rug burns and two really good orgasms later, they’re eating cold leftover pizza and licking sauce off of each other’s mouths.

 

The May Festival had been launched with a parade through town while Sam was busy being fucked blind by his brother, but they catch the last of the day’s public events as they cruise slowly by the town park.  There’s a brass quartet in the octagonal bandstand, people on lawn chairs clumped by twos and threes around the green, families having barbecues further back where the pavilions and picnic tables are.

 

Sam notices that Dean’s gotten quiet, wonders if it’s because of the families or the festival or what.  He knows that sometimes his brother misses what he never had, even if Dean wouldn’t admit it on pain of death.

 

“It’s nice,” he offers now by way of starting a conversation, indicating the park, families, picnics with a jerk of his head when Dean glances over at him.

  
Dean snorts.  “Yeah, like Norman freakin’ Rockwell.  No thanks.”

 

“C’mon.  You never thought it might be nice just to hang out like that, blend in?”

 

“No way, Sam.  I’d be bored inside a day.  Besides, can you picture me listening to that crap?”  And with a flick of his wrist, the sound of a trumpet solo is drowned out by _Deep Purple_.

 

Sam thinks it’s a case of protesting too much, but _Smoke on the Water_ prevents him from voicing what’s probably an unwise observation to make out loud anyway.

 

The carnival has come to town for the duration of the festival and takes up a majority of the county fairgrounds on the south end of town.  They pull into a grass parking lot, spaces delineated by white line paint, and pay their two dollars to park.

 

Directly ahead is the midway, kiddie rides prominent in the foreground.  Further back, Sam can see a decent sized Ferris Wheel.  There’s an Octopus and even a Mad Hatter, yellow cars racing in dizzying swoops and swivels around a rickety metal track that screams safety violations and whiplash lawsuits.

 

Predictably, Dean heads for the midway games where he spends approximately three dollars and ten minutes pissing of a succession of seedy-looking riggers, all of whom glare after them like kicking Dean’s ass is at the top of their to-do list, right after molesting children and burning live puppies.

 

“Dean,” Sam grouses through clenched teeth.  Dean grins at him over the Guns ‘n’ Roses poster, Metallica mirror, and big pack of “Heavy Metal Tattoos” he’s won.

“Take it easy, Sammy.  I’ll let you have the rose-and-thorns.”

 

He can’t help but snort a laugh through his nose and smile when Dean buys him a blue cotton candy.  He’s never really liked the stuff—finds it creepy, a fact he’ll never share with Dean.  But he eats it anyway, suppressing the teeth-grinding shudder of sugar overload at every third bite.

 

They see several people Sam knows by sight and a couple he knows by name, including Jason, who approaches them at an awkward lope that screams relief.

  
“Hey Sam!” he says, too loud, and Sam says, “Hey, Jason.  This is my brother, Dean.” 

 

Introductions done, they stand there awkwardly for several beats until Dean says, “So, Jason, you from around here?”

 

Jason nods and pulls a face.  “Born and raised.” 

 

“Any cool town ghost stories?”

 

Sam internalizes a groan and watches as Jason’s face lights up.  He spends the next several minutes regaling them with tales of a ghostly hitchhiker out by where the old turnpike takes a fatal turn around an enormous oak; the Wilson farm, apparently infamous for sightings of a mad old woman in the attic window; and the quarry, where some kids drown a long time ago when they misjudged the distance to the edge and plunged over it in their pick-up.

 

“Their screams can still be heard on foggy nights,” Jason finishes.

 

Sam almost swallows his tongue trying not to laugh out loud, but Dean is smooth enough.  “That’s some scary shit, man.”

 

Sam cuts Dean a look, but his brother’s face is that pleasant look Sam considers “professional,” given what they do for a living, meaning it’s guaranteed to get exactly what Dean wants out of the person he’s interrogating.

 

“So this hitchhiker…she hot?”

  
Sam is suddenly preoccupied with his bootlace, manages to stifle a snicker.

 

When he tunes in again, he realizes that Dean’s gotten Jason on a roll, describing minutiae of the woman’s appearance.  Suddenly, it’s not nearly so funny.

 

When Jason finally wanders off to find “some friends,” Sam says, “You think there’s actually a spirit?”

 

Dean shrugs.  “It’s worth checkin’ out.  I’m home all week.”

 

There’s no evident bitterness in Dean’s observation, barely a sharp edge to his tone, but Sam feels a stab of guilt anyway.

  
Before he can fess up and ruin their night, however, he notices that they’ve come to the far edge of the carnival, to an overgrown field, grass beaten into muddy paths between canvas tents, their bright paint faded by age and use until he has to squint to make out the first one on the left.

“Madame Zeleska, Tarot Reader.  She sees the future.”

 

He reads it aloud, and Dean responds with the expected noise of derision.

 

“C’mon,” He surprises himself by saying.  “It could be fun.”

 

“No way,” Dean says, giving his brother a look like Sam’s sprouted a second head, or at least a third eye.  “It’s a waste of money.”

 

“C’mon, Dean,” He wheedles, employing a look he usually reserves for getting the last piece of pizza or the only clean towel.

 

“Why do you want to know the future, anyway, Sam?  What good has that ever done?  You know even actual prophecies are usually half bullshit.”

 

On the spot for a legitimate reason, Sam can’t manage one.  He doesn’t know why he’s got the need to see the reader; he only knows that he wants to go in, and he wants Dean to go with him.

 

Dean sighs in exasperation and throws his hands up.  “Fine, if it’ll keep you from sulking, we’ll give my hard-earned money to the nice con artist.  But so help me, if she says we’re in grave danger, I’m going to kick your ass.”

 

Despite the dimness of the world outside the tent, it still takes Sam’s eyes a few seconds to adjust.

 

“You’re Madame Zeleska?” Dean asks, incredulous and a little impressed.

 

Apparently, Dean’s eyesight adjusted more quickly.

 

While Sam is happy that Dean is mollified, he’s a little unnerved to discover that “Madame” Zeleska is only a little older than Dean and almost as attractive.

 

The listing round table, purple velvet covering, worn cards, rickety wooden chairs, all of it are exactly as he’d expected.

 

The reader herself is not.  Her only concession to carnival schlock is a purple turban, set at a rakish tilt on her pretty brunette head, as if she’s well aware that she’s catering to expectations.

 

She’s wearing a simple blue peasant blouse, not a single gold bangle, and if Sam can detect a scent of anything, it’s fruity and light.  No sandalwood, patchouli, or nag champa within sniffing distance.

  
He’s not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.

  
When she speaks, it’s with an almost-laugh, a lilting and musical sound that makes Sam inexplicably uneasy.  If it wouldn’t make him look like a total wuss, he’d back out now.

 

“Madame Zeleska retired.  I bought out her part of the show,” The woman explains with a welcoming smile.  “I’m Zarah.”

 

“Zarah Zeleska?” Dean asks, disbelief evident.

 

“No,” she answers, clearly closing the door on further discussion about her personal life.

 

Dean slides almost eagerly into his seat, then, and Sam sighs inwardly.  But though his brother’s eyes are fixed on the woman before them, hers are watching her hands working over the cards.

  
“I’ve never done brothers before,” She says with just the right combination of intention and innocence.

 

Dean’s laugh is lickable, and Sam hates her a little for getting it out of him.

 

That seems to be her only flirtation with…well, flirtation, though, because immediately after Sam is seated, she’s all business, hands moving fluidly over the cards, eyes fixed on their faded colors.

 

She doesn’t look up at either of them until she’s apparently satisfied with her handling of them.

 

Then it’s only to turn a single card off the top and pin Sam to his seat with a steady look.

 

“Seven of Swords,” She says, something of a smile teasing the edges of her mouth.  “You like to get what you want through unusual means.  You seek the back door when the front is impassable.”

 

Sam does his best to sit still under her scrutiny.  He can feel Dean’s eyes on him, too.

 

Thankfully, she turns another card—“The Lovers”—and a third, which she lays over the second.  “Knight of Swords.  That’s you,” She explains, looking at Dean.

 

A fourth card is placed above the grouped three. 

 

“King of Swords, reversed.  That’s your influence.”

 

Dean opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but she stops him with a stare that has something strange in it, like she sees more than she’s saying.

  
Sam shifts in his seat, clears his throat, but she beats Sam to speaking, directing her comments first to Dean.

  
“You’re a lot like your father—stubborn, smart, strong, brave, loyal, and true.  But he’s harder, darker.  He rules with an iron fist.  What he says is law.  You let him lead because you trust him.  You—“ and Sam can tell that she’s speaking to him now, though he doesn’t want to look at those knowing eyes again.  “You find other ways to handle him, ways around his wrath.  Sometimes, though, you can’t help but clash.  It’s in your nature.”

 

“This card, though,” and the puzzlement in her voice brings Sam’s eyes to her face at last.  She’s tapping the Lovers card thoughtfully, eyes narrowed in concentration.

 

She blows out a breath and shakes her head.  “Maybe it will come to me,” she continues, drawing another card, placing it to the right of the first group.

 

“The Tower,” She explains.  “Something dark and unexpected is coming your way.”

 

Dean snorts at this.  “Go figure,” he mutters darkly.  Sam elbows him to be quiet.

 

Then the reader looks up at them and places another card: 

 

“Six of Swords.  There are difficult but necessary choices to be made ahead.  And separation.”  Again, her voice is laced with confusion, as though she’s trying to understand, trying to see.

 

She looks at Sam, says slowly, like she’s feeling her way in the dark:  “Your road is not his.”

 

Dean says, “Bullshit,” stands, reaches for Sam.

 

But Sam is pinned to his seat, feeling weighted there, like he can hardly breathe for gravity pressing him earthward.

 

 “Your path is unknown,” she continues, speaking now to Dean, turning over another card, one she doesn’t bother to identify.  It’s as though she’s hearing voices that tell her what to say.  He discovers that he’s holding his breath.  “It trails into darkness, and you cannot know the way.”

 

She chooses another, breathes, “The Moon,” nods to herself as though it’s confirming what she already knew.

 

“You will not be alone, though it might seem that way sometimes,” she says, looking at Dean, the Three of Swords, reversed, on the dark cloth, her hands hovering like lighting birds over the spread.

 

Another card.  Ten of Swords, upright.

 

“The battle will be long, but no matter the outcome, you can win if you remember him,” she continues, already turning another, The Prince of Cups.  Her eyes fall on Sam, a new light of understanding in them, and as she parts her lips to speak again, Sam feels a shiver of cold certainty lance up his spine.

 

“You’re the lover,” she says, and it’s clear that she knows.

  
“C’mon, Dean,” Sam says urgently, touching his brother’s arm and then tugging on it.  Dean stands transfixed, though, like he’s the one enchanted now.

 

Or enthralled.

  
“Dean!”

 

But she’s already turned the last card, eyes rising from the spread with growing horror, hand shaking a little as she takes it away, like the card has burned her.  Or whispered something ugly only she can hear and know.

 

The Devil stares them down as they depart, Sam fleeing with Dean in town, stiff-legged, like he’s forgotten how to walk.

 

“It’s just a stupid game,” he asserts, full of bravado now with the tinny music of the carousel and the comforting noise of barkers to drown the frantic beating of his heart.  “It doesn’t mean anything.”

 

As though he’s just discovered where he is, Dean shakes his elbow out of Sam’s grip and stops.

 

“What the hell was that, Sam?”

 

“It was nothing, Dean, like you said.  She was just conning us out of our money.”

 

“We didn’t pay her, Sammy,” Dean whispers, voice rough and tight.

 

“Let’s go home,” Sam suggests, and if there’s something pleading in his tone, he doesn’t care.  He wants to be out of the sight of so many staring eyes, out of the damp spring air, away from the suddenly ominous scents and sounds of the carnival.

 

They’re quiet, tense on the way home, for Sam’s part because he’s replaying the reader’s words, her hands on the cards and the images, all telling a story that he couldn’t quite understand, as though someone were whispering to him over a crackling phone line.  It doesn’t help that the streets are damp now with a slow spring drizzle, the tires making a susurrus that mimics human voices.

 

They hurry into the house and aren’t inside more than a minute before they’re pressed together, hands and mouths desperate for touch, tearing at each other’s clothes, biting and sucking as though their survival depends upon seeing which one can be naked soonest, which one can spill the most words into the damp night air.

 

They leave a trail of clothes from the front door to the back bedroom, as if they’ll need it to again find their way out once they’ve sated the apparently mutual and screaming need.

 

Dean isn’t gentle when he shoves Sam back onto the bed, but Sam’s already half-reaching for Dean, meeting him part way when his brother kneels between his spread thighs and starts to bite a line of love-marks down his chest.

 

Sam arches and writhes beneath his brother’s brutal mouth, tugs at Dean’s hair, forces his flesh between Dean’s teeth like he would choke him, and by the time Dean’s made his way to Sam’s sensitive belly, Sam is cursing viciously, a steady stream of, “Fuck, Dean, don’t you—, Fuck!” that means nothing but acts like an incantation driving Dean to suck on the flat expanse below Sam’s navel, to suck until Sam is bucking and coming from the pleasure and pain, sucking until a deep purple bruise rises, a welt Sam can feel beneath his shaking fingers when he strokes the spot and throws his head back at the aftershock of pleasure.

 

Usually, Dean asks Sam if he’s okay, kisses the places he’s bitten, brings Sam to full arousal again slowly and with care that belies the words Dean almost never uses. 

 

This time, he blows a broken breath against Sam’s quaking thigh and surges up Sam’s body, skimming Sam’s seed from his stomach and slicking himself, sliding into the space where Sam’s thigh meets his pelvis, rutting against Sam, grunting with every thrust until he says, “Sam,” like he’s begging for something.  Sam knows what Dean wants, bends his knee and flexes the muscle of his leg to make a tighter space, increasing Dean’s friction.

 

Dean growls, “Fuck,” against Sam’s sweat-damp shoulder, sinks his teeth into Sam’s collarbone and comes hard, bucking against his brother’s body, shaking the bed until the headboard thuds against the wall in a stuttering rhythm.

 

“God,” Dean whispers, falling with all of his weight onto Sam only for a moment, only for Sam to feel the rabbiting of Dean’s heart and the frantic expulsion of his breath against his neck.

 

Then Dean pushes away, falls gracelessly to the side, one hand still sprawled on Sam’s slick skin.

They fall into a drugged sleep, or at least, that’s how it feels to Sam when he awakens early, grey light creeping across the tired tread of the carpet, mouth sticky and stale, air fogged with breath-fug and stale spooge.

 

His back is to the wall, his nose inches from Dean’s hair—spooning is the only way they’ll both fit on the narrow twin bed.  There’s no way to escape without waking Dean, which Sam is strangely reluctant to do, not out of tenderness but out of a tenuous fear, like the memory of a disturbing dream.  It lingers until his bladder suggests he get up or get soaked.

 

He snags a pair of sweats from the clean clothes pile and steps into them, not bothering with underwear.

 

Dean snuffles and twists around, burrowing into the warm spot Sam left, but he doesn’t awaken, and when he makes it to the bathroom, Sam sighs in relief both for the stream of piss and the sense that he has a few minutes of breathing room to try to clear his head of whatever this feeling is.

 

Carefully, like he’s probing for land mines, Sam goes over the tarot reader’s words again, trying to find the point of the reading that made him most uncomfortable.  It doesn’t take a psychologist to figure it out, either.  As soon as he remembers her saying they’d be separated, that their paths were not the same, Sam feels his stomach heave, and he holds his breath against a wave of sick that rises.

 

He swallows back burning bile and cups his hand under the faucet until the water runs cold, drinking carefully and then splashing his face.

 

He avoids his own eyes in the cloudy medicine cabinet mirror and exits, brushing his hair back with his fingers and considering breakfast options.

 

Dean’s in their bedroom doorway, watching Sam’s progress with hooded eyes that skitter away from Sam’s.

 

So the awkward isn’t a one-way road.  Somehow, it doesn’t make him feel better.

 

“What the fuck was that last night, Sam?” Dean asks, startling Sam more by the uncharacteristic directness than the tone, which is hard and sharp-edged and laced with apprehension.

 

He’s not used to hearing that note in his big brother’s voice.

 

Sam meets his eyes, brave enough for the both of them now that he knows Dean’s feeling it, too.  “I don’t know.  Spell? Curse?”

 

Dean shakes his head.  “I don’t think so.  I didn’t get the witch vibe from her, did you?”

 

Sam shrugs.  He hasn’t had nearly the hunting experience Dean’s had.  He’s research. Dean’s development.

 

“I’m not sure I’d know a witch if I met one.”

 

Dean’s eyes go distant and abstract, but when he visibly shakes off the thoughts and focuses once again on Sam, it’s with a wolfish grin.

 

Sam tracks his brother’s gaze to the bruise on his belly, and even as he’s flushing a little with embarrassment, he feels the stirring of desire in his core like a snake coming slowly out of sleep.

 

It’s going to be that kind of Sunday, then.

 

By the time they make it to the kitchen, it’s well past what even the least respectable types might call breakfast, so they wash down the last of the cold pizza with the dregs of the juice, standing hip to hip against the countertop, not talking, content to chew for awhile.

 

Though they’re both muzzy-headed, still half-lidded, like their sleep wasn’t actually restful, Dean insists they spar for awhile, which means moving the sparse furniture of the living room to the walls, since rain has been a steady accompaniment on the roof all day.

 

The wrestling leaves them red-faced, muscle-strained and panting, Sam half covering Dean, exchanging ragged breath that smells of garlic and sour juice.  It doesn’t stop Sam from stealing a victory kiss, which leads to a different kind of athletic contest altogether, one that carries over into a joint shower.

 

_At least shower sex is self-cleaning_ , Sam thinks, stepping breathless into the steamy bathroom, leaving Dean to finish rinsing under the tepid stream that is the last of what the ancient hot water tank can manage.

 

Later still, he studies some, getting a little ahead in history so he doesn’t have to worry about the pop quizzes that aren’t actually a surprise to anyone with half a brain in the class.  He’s sitting with his back to the couch arm, legs stretched out.  Dean’s at the opposite end watching some badly dubbed martial arts movie, and occasionally, Sam will let himself be distracted, shoving at his brother’s thigh with his foot in a motion calculated to get a rise out of Dean.

 

It works about as well as he’d expected, but it leaves off before a big finish, if only because both of them are tired and a little sore.  They’ve had more sex in the last twenty-four hours than they’d had in the previous week and a half, at least.

 

He’d examine that fact more closely, except he doesn’t really want to, and as it’s been doing all day, his mind veers back to the woman last night, her white hands and the colorful cards, her words hanging like visible warnings in the air around them.

 

“You want to go out to the diner tonight?”

 

Sam just wants to get away from his thoughts, and Dean seems to be on board with that, if the eagerness of his, “Hell, yeah,” is any indication.  It’s not like the food at the diner is anything special.  Obviously, they’re both a little stir-crazy.

 

Though the illusion of anonymity is a little dented by the half-hearted “Heys” of a couple of kids Sam sort of recognizes from school, he still manages to pretend that he and Dean are on a date, a couple in love out eating a meal after a long weekend of staying in and having sex.  He daydreams, sometimes, of moving someplace where no one knows the circumstances of their relationship, where he and Dean can eat at a restaurant and exchange hot glances and touch each other like he wants to.

 

Never mind that Dean wouldn’t stand for that kind of public display, anyway.  Never mind, even, that there are precious few places where two young men could express their love publicly that way without earning a different kind of trouble.

They’re brothers.  Period.  Sam sometimes imagines that people must know it even when they don’t know the Winchester family at all.  Sometimes he thinks they wear a mark to signal their differences.

 

Most times, he doesn’t care.  But once in awhile, he does.  And then he feels guilty.  Because Dean doesn’t seem to have the same doubts, not since that first time, when his brother cried and asked forgiveness before kissing Sam and changing everything.

 

Now, though, they hardly ever discuss it, and then only obliquely, in language coded like an obscure Sumerian prophecy. Sam thinks Dean is confident in what they are and doesn’t give a damn about what the world thinks.

 

Except Dad.  Dean cares maybe too much about what their father thinks.  Not that Sam’s eager to have their relationship revealed to a man as good with guns as their father.  He doesn’t think their dad would actually hurt them.  Maybe.  Probably.  But for all the weird shit John Winchester has learned to confront and conquer, Sam thinks maybe this one fact, the fact of their love, his and Dean’s, would break him finally and forever.

 

And though Dean doesn’t show it, even when Dad’s around, Sam knows his brother fears John’s discovering them more than he does anything they’ve ever hunted.  It’s the one family secret Dean means to keep until the grave.

  
Which means his fantasy of a dinner date in Anywhere, USA, is just that—a fantasy.  Forever.

 

“You gonna finish that?”

 

Sam looks up from where his fork hovers over a pile of mashed potatoes and congealing brown gravy.  Shaking his head, he pushes the plate away, toward his brother, who dives in happily. 

 

Sam declines dessert but lets Dean get pie, of course, and watches as the rich red of the cherry juice coats Dean’s lips a scant second before he licks them off.  Despite his uneasiness at the place to which his thoughts had brought him, Sam’s almost painfully hard in his jeans watching Dean like this, all abandoned appetite.

 

God, but he loves his brother.

 

After dinner, they pointedly avoid the May Fest activities and go nowhere near the fairgrounds in their slow cruise through Orchard Ridge’s sleepy Sunday streets.

 

As is habit, Dean checks the answering service when they get back to the house.  Sam sits on the couch with his math book, but he’s paying no attention to it, his eyes instead fastened on Dean’s face, watching for the moment disaster announces itself into their lives. Though there’s never been a message he didn’t want to hear, Sam always expects one, like somehow Dad would let them know he was dead, which makes no sense, but there it is.

 

Dean nods like he’s actually answering their dad before hanging up.

  
“Dad’ll be a little longer than he’d planned.  He says he’ll be home for your birthday for sure, though.”

 

Sam nods and suppresses the snort he’d ordinarily make.  He doesn’t want to piss Dean off, and there’s no point, anyway.  He stopped believing Dad’s promises a long time ago.  So did Dad, Sam firmly believes.  It’s only Dean who maintains an obstinate and delusional denial.  Sam and Dad are somehow complicit in the strength of Dean’s stubborn refusal to accept the shape of his family now, Sam and Dad on opposite sides of a circle, Dean at the center, where they both reach to meet him.

 

“That’s enough math review,” he mutters, chucking his book in the general direction of his bookbag.

 

“It’s gettin’ late,” Dean offers from his spot at the kitchen table, where he’s been working to file the serial numbers off a couple of new guns Dad had left behind for that purpose.

 

“Yeah,” Sam agrees, standing, arms stretching as a yawn splits his face.  “You stayin’ up?”

 

It’s not an invitation, and Dean doesn’t take it that way, just nods over his careful work, files, acid bottle, glass dropper neatly arranged on a stained towel at his elbow.

 

“Good night,” Sam offers softly.  Dean glances up and gives Sam a smile full of warmth and recent memory.  “Good weekend,” he answers.

 

Sam feels the warmth of Dean’s expression in his chest even as it travels up his neck and blooms across his face in an honest to god blush.  He doesn’t care, though, doesn’t care that he’s grinning goofily back, either.  Only wishes the moment could last forever, enough to carry them through whatever the future might hold.

 

That thought does it, dissipating the glow, and he repeats his good night quietly, heading for their bedroom, hoping he doesn’t dream of pale hands and colored cards and a disembodied voice from above or beyond seeding his days with uneasiness.

 

 

*****

 

 

Sixth period English is usually a challenge for Sam.  Not because the material is difficult. On the contrary, it’s the fourth time in three years he’s reading _The Catcher in the Rye_.  He can quote whole passages by heart.  And it’s not like the writing is especially hard, either.  Though it’s an honors class, most of his peers seem content to stick to the five-paragraph essay, which Sam had mastered as a freshman.

 

No, it’s just hard to stay awake most days.  The room is in the middle of the school—second floor of three, third room from either end of the hall—and it faces west, so by mid-afternoon, it’s pretty warm if the sun’s out.  Plus, it’s the class right after lunch, and lately, Sam’s been eating his own weight in sandwiches.  Dean’s always bitching about the amount of bread and lunchmeat they have to buy.  After all those starches and carbs, Sam always feels like a jungle snake, logy with digestion and wishing he could just curl up on a branch somewhere and sleep.

 

Add to that the weekend’s strenuous sexcapades and his dream-fractured sleep, and Sam can hardly be blamed for nodding off.

 

It’s lucky for Sam, then, that his last name starts with a W, which usually means he’s in the back of the room.  Lucky because this sunny April Monday is the day Mr. McRandall picks to go postal on a kid he catches sleeping—Jeremy Nevins, who sits in the second row, second seat from the front.

 

McRandall is halfway through making Holden Caulfield’s swearing into the most boring subject ever when he stops dead with the kind of pause that brings every head in the room up. 

 

“I’m sorry.  Am I disturbing your rest?” McRandall begins in the easily ignored sarcasm of teachers everywhere. 

 

Jeremy lolls upright, and Sam sees his shoulders stiffen at the expression on the teacher’s face, at his proximity to Jeremy’s desk.

 

“Maybe if you weren’t busy smoking pot and screwing cheerleaders all weekend, you’d have more energy for school,” the teacher suggests, departing from the accepted script and earning nervous titters and a couple of disbelieving laughs from the class.

 

Sam sits up in his own seat, stills his body to waiting the way he’s learned from practice and experience.  There’s a threat here, now, but he can’t place it.

 

On his side, Jeremy does nothing, but Sam bets his face is priceless. 

 

“You think it’s funny,” McRandall says, his eyes going now to the class as a whole, scanning them.  Sam keeps his eyes averted, watching covertly as McRandall seeks out the weak ones, the ones foolish enough not to look away.

 

“How about you, Missy?  You think this is funny?”

 

The plump brunette with a bad gum-cracking habit and the work ethic of a drunken grasshopper startles visibly and starts to wrap the end of one long strand of hair around and around her finger.  Sam can see the way the flesh of the finger whitens as she tightens the spiral.

 

“Answer me!”

 

He’s shouting now, and Missy starts to tremble and stammer.  “I--.  No, it’s not.  It’s not,” and there are tears in the back of her voice providing convincing support to her words.

 

“You worthless waste of breath,” McRandall spits scornfully, moving down the aisle toward her seat.  Sam starts to wonder if he’s going to have to get up and do something.

 

“And you—“ The teacher’s leveled his pitiless, burning eyes on Jeff Muskiewicz, star linebacker of the varsity football team and two-time state All-pro.  He’s in the honors English class by some miracle of coaching and coercion, and everybody knows it, but no one ever brings it up to his face.

 

“How is it you manage to breathe at all?  Something as dumb as you shouldn’t be able to breathe and walk at the same time.”

 

Jeff stares, open-mouthed, anger clear on his face but also puzzlement, like an elephant being repeatedly stung by a wasp.

 

McRandall lets out a disgusted breath and turns to walk back to the front of the room.

 

“You’re all a bunch of losers.  I don’t know why I waste my time on you.  I could be writing books, you know?  I’ve got a novel in me.  Maybe not the great American novel, but something good.  God knows in a country this dumb, where that _Twilight_ bitch makes so much money, I should be raking in at least enough to get me out of this uncultured backwater gulag, anyway.  I’m done with this shit.”

 

And with a calmness more ominous than overt anger would offer, McRandall sweeps the entire contents of his desk into the recycling box beside it, save the heavy black metal three-hole punch, which he hefts experimentally a couple of times, like he’s tossing a baseball in his palm, before whirling and throwing it will all his might at the green chalkboard behind him.

 

The word “phony” fractures as the board shatters with a loud crack.  A couple of girls squeak.  One screams.

  
Then McRandall grabs his jacket from the back of his desk chair, slings it over his shoulder, and saunters to the door, whistling.  He opens it, steps outside, and is gone.

 

There is a moment of heavy silence, broken all at once by every voice except Sam’s raised in alarm, speculation, and abject relief.

 

The siege is over.  Sam alone stares darkly, speculatively, at the closed door through which his teacher just walked, the door signaling the man’s surrender to something that none of the other kids in the room can see or feel, apparently.

 

He waits until the voices collect in a generalized wonderment over what should be done next and then stands and says, “I’ll go to the office,” not waiting to see if his classmates agree.

 

He acts the ambassador, waiting patiently and then with increasing impatience for the assistant principal to see him.  When he explains why he’s there, she gives him a look like he’s trying to put something over on her.

 

“See for yourself,” he offers in the mild voice that masks challenge, a voice he uses most often with his father.

 

She bustles past him with a tsk and commands him to follow her, like she’s going to surprise him with evidence of his mendacity when they arrive at his English classroom.

 

Of course, she’s the one surprised.

  
Since there are only three minutes left in the period, she releases the class with strict orders not to talk about what happened there.

 

Sam doesn’t keep the scornful smirk from his face, and she gives him a dirty look, but he just turns his back and heads toward his locker, hearing already the eager noises of his classmates picking out messengers to carry the story far and wide.

  
By chemistry, it’s all anyone’s talking about, and even the stolid Mrs. Ramsey finally gives up on her lesson plans and calls it a day, saying, “Turn to page 326 and read to the end of the chapter.  Answer questions 1-6 at the end of the chapter for a quiz grade for tomorrow.”

 

She doesn’t admonish them when they ignore her entirely, and the rest of the period is spent in avid chatter, which Sam stoically avoids, instead actually completing his homework, if only so he can spend the night doing something else.

He’s cornered at his locker by Jason, who wants to know all about it.

  
“I heard he went apeshit and started throwing stuff at you guys.”

 

Sam shakes his head, not so much astonished at the warped nature of the information as at the excitement in Jason’s voice at the very possibility of violence.  Sam himself has had so much of it in his life that he finds it hard to understand, sometimes, why other people seem to seek it out.

  
“No.  He just threw the three-hole punch at the chalkboard before he left.”

 

He tries to downplay Mr. McRandall’s rage, his nasty words, his furious, burning eyes.

 

But by the light in Jason’s eyes, though, Sam can tell that it’s too late to put the horses of hysteria back in the barn.  He wonders if there’s going to be a mob outside of McRandall’s house tonight, wonders if it’s that kind of town.  God knows they’ve seen it before, in other places. 

 

“Listen, Jason, it’s not a big deal.  Guy just lost his cool, is all.  He’ll probably get a week’s suspension, have to apologize to us or something, and then be back behind his desk, boring us to tears.”

 

Jason’s enthusiasm falters.  “You think?”  He sounds distinctly disappointed.

 

Sam nods vigorously.  “Yeah, I do.”

 

Jason’s shoulders slump.  “Crap.  I was hoping we’d get a really hot substitute.”

 

At that, Sam laughs.  “You wish.  Probably an eighty year old woman with false teeth and a grammar fetish.”

 

Jason mock-shudders and slams his locker shut.  “Well, I’m going to keep hoping.”

 

“Dream on,” Sam answers, following his friend down the hall and out to where Dean waits at the Impala. 

 

Sam tells Dean about the incident with McRandall while they’re heading toward the grocery store to restock.  Dean doesn’t say much.  In fact, the sum total of his immediate reaction is, “Huh.”  But it’s intoned in such a way that Sam knows his brother is thinking it over, so he lets it go in favor of focusing on which snacks are on sale and whether or not they can actually turn orange from too much boxed mac-and-cheese mix.

 

The answer apparently no, they dine on a double helping of it that night while talking about nothing particularly important, maybe even avoiding the weirdness in favor of having a normal dinner.

 

Later, though, Dean settled in at one end of the couch watching seventies sitcoms, laugh track turned low as a nod to Sam, who’s sitting at the other end, trying to keep the title of his SAT review book out of Dean’s sight, Dean mutes the television and turns toward Sam.

 

“So, I saw something weird in town today.”

 

It’s his brother’s inflection that catches Sam’s attention.  He knows that tone of voice.  It means Dean’s putting together a theory, which probably means they’ve got a hunt.  Sam suppresses a sigh and says, “What?” as neutrally as he can.

“This old lady was parking her car, a big old Buick Roadmaster, and she left it ass half out at an angle to the curb.  The barber came out of his shop and punctured her tires with his scissors, told her he didn’t give a shit if she had more money than Midas, he couldn’t stand the way she always acted like she owned the goddamn road.  Then he went back into his shop like nothing had happened.”

 

“Weird, right?” Dean asks, like maybe Sam has a better idea of the small town psyche than he does.

 

“Yeah,” Sam says, considering Mr. McRandall’s face, the way he behaved.  He’s far enough lost in thought that he doesn’t realize Dean’s not engaged in the discussion, either, until his brother says, “You still wasting money on that shit?”

 

Sam can’t figure out what Dean means for a minute.  Then he sees his brother’s eyes on the test book, which Sam has let fall face-down across his leg.

 

“Yeah,” he says, and it’s the same defensive tone he usually reserves for their father.

 

“Why bother, man?  Aren’t the SATs for people going to college?”

 

“Yeah,” Sam repeats, only this time his voice is careful, inflectionless.

 

Dean pins him with a look, and Sam glares back, daring Dean to ask the inevitable question.

 

He doesn’t, though, his eyes darting away, and Sam sees there an unexpected expression.  If he didn’t know his brother better, he’d think it was fear.  But that can’t be, right?  What could Dean be afraid of?

 

“Want anything?” Dean asks a few uncomfortable seconds of silence later, rising from the couch and padding toward the kitchen.

 

“I’m good,” Sam answers. 

 

They pass the rest of the night in a mutually unvoiced détente that ends with hurried blowjobs in a shared shower.

 

Later, Dean sound asleep in the next bed, snoring a little, Sam finds himself coming back again to the day’s events, worrying them like a loose tooth.  The way Mr. McRandall looked, the way he seemed possessed by something, or like something was speaking through him.

 

He doesn’t know what time it is when he stops looking at the clock, but his sleep is broken by indefinite dreams that somehow seem strangely prophetic when he wakes the next day and tries to recall them.

 

Halfway through the school day, Sam is wishing for some other scandal—a peeing-in-the-pool incident, a suspected pregnancy, hell, accusations of his own gayness—anything to distract his classmates, who circle him like jackals for more details of yesterday’s English class debacle.

 

When he gets to McRandall’s room, Sam’s happy to see that there are small mercies, after all.  In this case, peace comes in the form of Mrs. Restler, a seen-it-all substitute who’s a legend around Orchard Ridge High—Sam had gotten the skinny on her his second day there. The fearful silence that descends on the room when she enters amply indicates her preternatural power. 

 

“Take out your books.  Read Chapter 19.  When you’ve finished, come up to the desk for a worksheet.  You will complete the worksheet by the end of the class for a grade.”

 

No one asks how much the worksheet will count for.  No one mentions that they’ve already covered Chapter 19.  When Tom DeLuce raises his hand, Sam half expects to see it shaking and isn’t remotely surprised to hear his voice break in the middle when he asks, “Can I get my book from my locker?”

 

Mrs. Restler gives Tom a look that has him dropping his hand and scrambling in his bookbag for some other work to do.

 

The rest of the class is broken only by the quiet shuffle of kids to the front to get worksheets. 

 

The questions are easy, and Sam’s through them in no time.  Reluctant to hand it in too quickly, though, and maybe earn the woman’s disapproval, Sam simply reads ahead until several other kids have already given in their work, and then he does the same.

 

Wondering what the teacher’s story is, why she’s so feared, Sam considers not stopping at her desk as the class exits with the bell, but he really wants to know if there’s any word of Mr. McRandall.  And besides, given his extracurricular family activities, she can’t be the scariest thing he’s ever faced, right?

 

For what feels like ten minutes after he’s asked the question, the substitute simply stares at him.  He wonders if he’s supposed to apologize or bow or something.

 

But just as he’s considering mumbling indistinctly and bolting from the room, Mrs. Restler’s expression seems to soften, at least enough that he thinks she might be trying to show sympathy.

 

“Mr. McRandall will be out indefinitely.  That’s all I’m at liberty to share with you.  Except…”  She pauses, staring at Sam like she’s reading the quality of his character right down to his DNA.  “…I wouldn’t expect him back this year.  He’s…had something of a shock.”  This last is added with the sort of emphasis that suggests he read between the lines.

 

Given that the chalkboard behind her is brand-spanking-new, Sam finds her euphemism ironic.

 

Sam nods like he understands, which he really doesn’t, not yet anyway, and says, “Thank you,” offering a smile that he hopes is sincere. 

 

“You’re welcome.  Now get to class.”  And like that, she’s back behind the barricade three decades of subbing has made nearly impenetrable.

 

By Mrs. Ramsey’s class, the theories about McRandall’s fate have turned into a series of increasingly ridiculous assertions.  Molly Eisler explains breathlessly to Cindy Richert that McRandall had “gone off his meds” and was wanted by the FBI in a string of child abductions.  Boris Michel and Rick Heulein keep insisting that McRandall was an undercover narc who took his role too seriously.  Someone sitting behind Sam, whose voice he can’t identify, keeps up a constant whisper that Sam catches only in fragments: “…wife…lover…suicide…” 

 

Even Mrs. Ramsay’s weary, “Class, quiet down,” and “That’s enough talking,” doesn’t stop the sibilant speculations.  The bell doesn’t halt the rumor mill, only spills the gossip out faster and louder.

 

He practically vaults into his seat in the Impala and lets out an exasperated chuff of relief that has Dean saying, “Tough day, Sammy?” in amused concern as Dean negotiates his way out of the school bus lane and into traffic.

 

“People are stupid,” Sam offers, like that explains everything.

  
“That they are.” 

 

“Where we goin’?” he asks a few minutes later as they fail to slow down and turn onto their own street.

 

“Want you to see something.”

 

The “something” is three streets down, parallel to their own, but different in every other way but directionality.  The houses are three-stories each, tall and narrow, with gabled dormers at the peaks and covered front porches that invite loitering.

 

Huge municipal maples form a cathedral arch over the street, and it’s like they’re driving inside a kaleidoscope, the sunlight broken by the trees’ green leaves strobing over the smooth glass of the windshield and spilling down the dark hood.

 

The idyll is broken by the flashing of rescue lights toward the end of the first block, and they’re stopped by a patrolman wearing his “I’m a serious lawman” face. 

 

“You’re going to have to turn around, sir.”

 

“What happened, officer?” Dean asks, in his good citizen voice, concerned but somehow not nosy.

 

“Fire.”

 

Sam can’t see Dean’s face, but he knows his brother is wearing the sympathy and horror look.

 

“Not the Reynolds’?” Dean asks, like he’s holding his breath with fear.

 

The cop, who’s not much older than Dean, brings his eyes back from admiring the Impala’s profile to give them both a closer look.

  
“You know them?”

 

“My dad is friends with Marty’s dad, Lou,” Dean explains, and if Sam didn’t know that their father doesn’t have friends who aren’t gun-runners or hunters, he’d totally believe his brother, too.

 

The cop doesn’t stand a chance.  He leans against the window frame like they’re old friends and lowers his voice conspiratorially.

 

“I didn’t tell you this.”

 

Dean and Sam both nod like they’re being let in on state secrets.

 

“Debbie went nuts and set the house on fire and then walked outside and watched it burn.  Poor Marty’s a wreck.  Their kid was inside.  Didn’t make it.”

Sam might’ve gotten stuck on the fact of the woman’s name if it weren’t for the far more horrifying revelation that replaces his amusement with a growing cold spot in his stomach.

 

“Oh, man,” Dean says, and Sam knows his brother isn’t faking the sorrow he can hear there.

 

“Yeah.  It’s bad.”

 

Dean spares a glance at the rearview, and Sam turns to see a van creeping up behind them.  The cop straightens suddenly and slaps the roof over Dean’s head a couple of times.  “Pull in over there, let the crime scene guys through.”

 

Dean does as he’s told, reversing when the road is clear and waving a friendly hand out the window at the cop as they drive slowly away.

 

“Something’s hinky in this town,” Dean says when they’ve turned back toward home.

 

“Yeah,” Sam says on a blown-out breath.  A shudder goes through him, and he stares out the window at the houses, streets, trees that no longer seem safe or normal, colored as they are now with a feeling of foreboding that he can’t shiver away or shake off.

 

“Gotta be the carnival,” Dean continues.

 

Sam nods.  By the vagaries of unoriginal public school systems nationwide, he’s read _Something Wicked This Way Comes_ five times in the last three years.  Creepy carnivals equal evil.

 

“I’ll check it out tomorrow,” Dean says.

  
“Alone?”

 

“Dude, I’m twenty.  I think I can handle a little recon mission on my own.  ‘Sides, guidance has its eyes on you, remember?”  
  
There’s an edge to the question that they both ignore.

 

Sam tries not to worry about Dean while he’s at school the next day.  A pop quiz in U.S. History and an interesting experiment in chem. lab keep him occupied for those periods, but otherwise, his mind’s on what Dean is finding at the carnival, and he’s more than a little relieved to see his brother waiting in the usual place for Sam at the end of the day. 

 

“So?” he asks before he’s all the way into the passenger seat.

 

Dean takes his time pulling away from the curb, but once they’re free of pedestrians and yellow buses, he glances Sam’s way.

 

“The place is dead during the day, but I pretended to be writing a feature on carnival life and managed to finagle a tour out of Elena Electrica, the Amazing Lightning Lady.  She was very helpful.”

 

Sam turns his head to see what he can get from Dean’s face at the revelation because his brother’s voice has taken on that jovial storytelling tone he gets when he isn’t telling the whole truth.

 

“I’ll just bet she was,” Sam answers.  His tone is _not_ jovial.

 

Dean laughs, a short sound, and continues.  “Anyway, I couldn’t use the EMF because she stuck to me like cotton candy, but from what I could see, there’s nothing unusual about the place.  I’ll have to go back tonight, maybe, scout it with the meter.”

 

“She stuck to you, huh?” Sam asks, and he kind of hates the way he sounds petulant rather than unthreatened.

 

“You want to focus here, Sam?  A kid is dead and we’ve got fuck-all to go on.”

 

An unexpected flare of anger lights him up inside.  Dean’s using guilt to try to get Sam to forget about the electric lady.

 

“You got something to hide, Dean?”

 

“What?” And now Dean’s pissed, too, and though Sam isn’t looking, he can feel the weight of Dean’s eyes on him.  He wants to squirm in his seat, feeling ashamed for his jealousy.  Dean’s right—a child died because of something that’s happening in this town.  His little emotional crisis is hardly important when compared to the reality of a dead kid.

 

Still…

 

“It’s just…I hate it when you flirt, Dean.”

 

“ _What_?”  They’ve pulled into the driveway, but Dean hasn’t shut the engine off.  He turns a little in his seat to look at Sam, who looks back and then away, unable to keep Dean’s gaze.

 

“Was she all over you?  Did she kiss you?  Did you let her?”  It’s ridiculous, the way he feels, and Sam hates it.  He clenches his fists against his legs and stares straight ahead, tracing the cracked paint on the garage door with his eyes and trying to swallow down the sudden rise of sickness in his stomach.

 

“Sam…” And Dean sounds like he’s not sure how to respond.  Sam hears anger, confusion, maybe even a little hurt.  “C’mon, man.  You know how it works.  Yeah, okay, I flirted.  But I didn’t make out with her.  And we sure as hell didn’t end up back at her trailer.  Where is this coming from, anyway?  Have I ever given you a reason to doubt me?”

 

He hasn’t.  Not ever.  Even when Dean’s been away on a job, Sam’s never doubted his brother’s loyalty and love.  He’s just…

 

“I’m scared.” And he’s as surprised to be saying it as Dean is to hear it, apparently, if his answering tone is any indication.

 

“Scared of what, Sammy?  Of me?”

 

Sam shakes his head.  He’s not sure he can explain it.

 

“We don’t have a normal relationship,” Sam says eventually, feeling his way through the words.  Dean’s expulsion of breath is expression enough.  It says, _“No shit.”_

 

“And I’m not sure how it works.  I’ve never…dated…before.  And I don’t know if I…if you… .  I just don’t know, okay?”  Sam throws his hands up and looks at Dean, pleading with his brother to let this go, to let them get out and go inside and pretend this conversation never happened.

 

But as much as stoicism is to Dean as obsession is to their father, Dean isn’t letting this one slide.

 

“Sam, I don’t know how it’s supposed to work, either, and I’ve…dated…a lot.  It’s not like there’s a rule book for this, you know?  But c’mon.  We hunt things that shouldn’t exist.  We live a life the rest of the world doesn’t even have a name for.  We can figure out a way to make this work, Sam.  Right?”

 

Maybe Dean meant to sound certain, but to Sam the question is more plaintive than persuasive, like maybe Dean’s hoping Sam’s secretly hiding answers Dean himself doesn’t have.

 

Sam meets Dean’s eyes again.  “You’re right.  I’m sorry.  Ever since that tarot reading I’ve felt…weird.  Like…”

 

“Like the world’s a little off-kilter,” Dean finishes.

 

Sam gives a weak, relieved little laugh.  “Yeah.”

 

“Me, too.” 

 

“So maybe it’s her?” Sam’s happy to shift the focus away from their relationship and onto the would-be witch.

 

Dean shakes his head, shuts off the engine, reaches for the door handle, answers as he’s climbing out.  “I don’t know, Sam.  It’d depend.  You think your English teacher, the barber, Debbie Reynolds all had tarot readings?  It’s a stretch.”

 

Sam lets out a breath and nods.  “Yeah, I guess it is.  Still…”

 

“It’s worth checking out,” Dean answers.  “But I’m still goin’ down there tonight with the EMF meter.”

 

“I’m going, too.”

 

“No, uh-uh.  No way.  You get caught creeping the place in the middle of the night, that could cause all kinds of trouble with the school.  Dad’d kill me.  I can do it, Sam.  Nothing to worry about.”

 

Sam wonders idly how many people had the same famous last words.  Custer?  The captain of the Titanic?  Maginot? 

 

As it turns out, Dean was right.  Despite the anxiety that plagues Sam’s studying of calculus, despite his waiting up, eyes staring at the bare outlines of watermarks on the ceiling over his bed, until Dean comes back from his recon at 3:00am, his brother is unscathed when he comes in at last.

  
He’s also unhappy.

  
“Nothing,” Dean growls when Sam indicates that he’s still awake.  “Not so much as a goddamned beep.  The place is clean, Sam.”

 

“So it’s the reader, then,” Sam says, feeling certain.

  
“I don’t know.”  Dean’s answer is sharp with frustration, and Sam settles into his pillow to let it go for the night.

  
“We’ll figure it out, Dean.”

 

There’s a pause, and then Dean offers in a quieter voice, “Maybe we should call Dad.”

 

“No!”  And Sam’s answer is too fast, for sure, but damn it, he’s enjoying the time they’re having together.  “He’s probably in the middle of a job.  You know how he hates to be bothered when he’s working.”

 

Sam can only make out a silhouette of Dean’s figure, but he sees his brother’s shoulders slump, sees him nod his head.

  
“Yeah.  Let’s just hope no one else dies before we get a handle on this thing.”

 

That’s the thought that chases Sam into sleep and through his dreams, and when the alarm goes off he’s so relieved to be out of them, he doesn’t care that he feels like he’s been beaten in his meager sleep.

 

“You look like crap,” Jason greets him at Sam’s locker when he drags into school three minutes before the homeroom bell.

 

“Thanks,” he huffs, hanging his coat and doing a pocket check of his pants—holy water, rosary, butterfly knife, lunch money—before closing it up again.

 

“Lunch?”

 

Twice a cycle, Jason gets the same lunch as Sam, and they usually sit together.  Jason has a small group of geeky but smart friends, and they took Sam in on his first day with the kind of welcome one finds in lonely people and beaten dogs the world over.

 

Sam nods. “Sounds good.”  He likes having friends, even if he isn’t always good at it, isn’t always sure how to lie to them without being hurtful, how to keep them away while letting them think he’s just like they are.

 

Dean’s always been better with people.

 

Thinking of Dean makes him feel warm in his belly, as always, and Sam wiles away first period US History thinking of the things they could do to celebrate his birthday if their dad doesn’t show up to ruin it.  It gets him through the next few periods just fine, too, until it’s time for lunch.

 

The table Jason and his friends call their own is in the corner of the cafeteria furthest from the food itself, tucked in between the false wall of the vending alcove and an emergency door that leads out to the rear parking lot.

  
Its position offers the illusion of privacy and a little actual protection, since it would take some for the bullies and jerks to make their way over to it and anyone sitting there could see them coming.

 

Sam likes it because there’s a door near at hand and he can see all of the entrances to the cafeteria from his seat.

 

He can also see the cluster of tables near the center of things that the jocks and cheerleaders defend against all interlopers with sharp tongues and broad backs.

 

A commotion from that quarter usually signals someone being victimized.  Today, though, it’s something entirely else.

 

With the sixth sense all adolescents share, the big room falls held-breath silent a second before Kyle Mendler, three-time All States quarterback and captain of the varsity soccer team, surges up from his seat and says, “I don’t care!  I don’t care what any of you think.  I love him!”  And then reaches for Riley Heil, second-string running back and first seat trumpet in the school band. 

 

The kiss seems to last minutes, though it could only have been thirty seconds before Riley rears back, tearing Kyle’s hands away from his face, staring stunned and betrayed at the other, whose own face has drained of all color.

 

He shoves clumsily through the nearest clot of boys, tears on his face starting before the catcalls and ruder things already chasing him. By the time Kyle’s cleared the north door, the uproar is out of hand, and it takes three cafeteria monitors to bring it back to some semblance of ugly order.

 

Sam, appetite gone, abandons his meal and rises, only to have Jason’s hand on his arm stop him.  The other boy’s face is washed of color, too, and Sam spares a second for what that might mean before he says, “Let me go,” not threatening, just firmly, like he’s making a suggestion it would be best for the other boy to follow.

  
“You can’t, Sam.”  Like Jason knows something—about Sam, or about Kyle, or maybe just about teenagers in general, something Sam himself never learned for all the strange shit he’s mastered in his relatively short life.

 

“Let me go,” he repeats, impatient now, and maybe unfriendly.

 

Jason’s shrug is almost helpless, like he thinks Sam’s going to his death.

 

It’s not Sam’s death they have to worry about, though, as he finds out later, exiting Mrs. Ramsey’s class to find clutches of sobbing girls and hang-headed boys in the hallway.

 

Sam knows before he hears, knows and wishes he’d been able to find Kyle, to catch up with him and talk to him, never mind that Kyle didn’t know Sam Winchester from Satan himself, never mind that Sam might not have had any words that would’ve helped.

 

Still, maybe Sam could’ve stopped Kyle from driving his car off the edge of the quarry and into its dark, devouring waters, which even now divers are desperately searching, not expecting to hook anything up out of the unforgiving deep but having to go through the motions, if only for Kyle’s devastated family and the kids who cluster and break apart only when an announcement comes over the PA to meet in the auditorium for an emergency meeting.

 

The buses will wait.

 

Sam doesn’t stay.  He doesn’t have to.  Of all the people at the assembly, adults included, he’s the only one who knows what actually killed Kyle.

 

Or, at least, he’s got a better idea than they ever will.

 

“What’s up?”  Dean’s eyes are worried.

 

Sam sighs into leans his head back, closes his eyes.  “Just drive,” he asks, and Dean obliges without a word.

 

He’s tired enough that the motion of the car, the familiar sound of its engine, the sense of his brother beside him, lulls Sam, and he might have slept except for Dean’s quiet, “You okay?”

 

Sam manages to pry his eyes open and swivel his head against the seat to look at Dean in profile.  There are lines around his mouth, and Sam feels bad for putting them there.

  
“Yeah, I’m fine.  It’s just…this kid on the football team lost it in lunch, kissed another guy, and then ran out of the room.  He drove his car into the quarry.  We just got word.”

 

“Oh, man,” Dean says, startling Sam then by resting his hand on Sam’s leg, just for second, but long enough for the heat of it to seep through his clothes and make him shiver.  “Did you know him?”

 

Sam shakes his head, closing his eyes again.  It seems suddenly too hard to keep them open.  “No.  He was the star quarterback.  I don’t exactly run in those circles.”  He says it matter-of-factly.

 

“Fuck,” Dean says, slamming his hand against the wheel and causing Sam to jump.  “We’ve gotta figure this out, Sam.”

 

“Yeah,” Sam says tiredly, the day’s events and night’s sleeplessness weighing on him, making it hard to take a full breath.

 

“But you have to get some sleep first,” Dean adds, slowing the car and pulling into a convenience store parking lot to turn around.

 

“I’m fine,” Sam protests, but the words’ persuasive power is lost by the yawn that follows them.

 

Dean ignores Sam entirely, just drives them home and says, “C’mon,” when Sam seems pinned to his seat, eyes half-lidded and unfocused.

 

Sam lets Dean take his backpack, follows Dean into the house.

 

“Go,” Dean orders, shoving Sam lightly toward the bedroom.

 

He doesn’t remember covering himself or taking off his shoes, just wakes in the dark with the pressure of his brother’s hand on his shoulder and the familiar voice saying his name.

 

“Wha?”

 

“You should get up and eat something, Sam.  Besides, I didn’t know if you had homework.”

 

Sam snuffles his way upright, rubs his eyes, looks at the clock.  8:00.

 

Dean’s got a re-heated plate of spaghetti for him, bread and butter, even a salad, though the lettuce looks a little the worse for the dressing it’s buried under.

 

Still, Sam realizes he’s ravenous, not having eaten much of his interrupted lunch, and Dean sits with him, making idle talk, until he’s cleaned every plate.

 

Dean offers to do the dishes so Sam can do his homework, and Sam rewards Dean’s kindness by sucking a bruise into the join of his shoulder and neck until Dean groans and grinds back into Sam’s half-interested cock.

 

Dean plants a suds-wet hand firmly on Sam’s chest and shoves him.  “Go do your homework.”  But his cheeks are flushed, his lower lip bitten, and Sam feels ridiculously smug for putting that look on his brother’s face.

 

It’s surprising how much homework he can get done when he has the promise of mind-blowing sex at the far end of it, and Dean doesn’t disappoint, delivering Sam to the very edge of orgasm before whispering, “I love you,” harsh and broken, into Sam’s ear and sending him spinning out over the void, falling into the stars that burst behind his eyes, breathless with a scream that he can’t even give voice.

 

When he comes around, Dean’s mouthing words of love into his damp neck, trailing them down his chest, and Sam says, “Dean,” with what’s left of his voice, saying _Yes_ and _Please_ , too, though without words.

 

Dean slides inside of him like Sam was already wet and wide, and he shudders under his brother’s weight, under the stretch of his breadth inside of him and the way the furnace of Dean’s belly touches his quivering skin.

 

“Sam,” Dean breathes, and Sam opens his eyes to see Dean looking down at him.  He can’t help the sound that leaves him, can’t help the shiver that wracks him, making Dean expel a startled breath and shudder the word, “Fuck” against Sam’s sweaty cheek.

 

Dean moves then, gently, like Sam might break, and Sam whines, whimpers his way through the sensation of Dean striking the spot inside of him that lights him up.

 

He’s spent, wrecked on too much pleasure, but Dean keeps rocking, a slow and steady rhythm that has Sam begging in a string of words with split syllables, every second breath his brother’s name.

 

Finally, Dean tenses, seating himself deep, eyes shut tight against the play of emotions making a revelation of his face.  Sam watches, wide-eyed, knowing there’s something different in this than they’ve ever had before, feeling it in the way Dean’s harsh breath breaks like a sob as he shudders out the last of his orgasm and collapses against Sam, who takes the weight gratefully, feeling covered and protected for a long, long span of shallow breaths before Dean levers himself up on shaking arms to give Sam room to breathe full.

 

“Dean—“ Sam starts, his voice barely audible in the still-breathing space between them.

  
But Dean only shakes his head, says, “Sammy,” like he’s always said when he wants his little brother to know exactly what he means.

 

They fall asleep tangled in spent sheets, seed drying sticky to little hairs and skin and seeping from Sam in a slow trickle that makes him feel complete.

 

He doesn’t dream that night and wakes the next day sore but entirely satisfied, especially when he sees the lazy circle of love marks on Dean’s chest and belly.

 

Dean joins him for a shower, which makes Sam late for school, but it doesn’t matter, as it turns out, since they’re having another assembly when he arrives and classes have been delayed forty-five minutes.  This time it’s a grief counselor talking about the stages of grieving and how it’s normal to feel when a friend has “passed on.”

 

If it weren’t for the teachers at every door marking off the stragglers who’ve arrived late, Sam would go right back out the way he came in and do some work in the library until this thing was over.  It’s not like he needs lessons in losing people.  His entire life has been an exercise in atonement, his father’s expiation for not saving Sam’s mother.

 

Shutting out the thought with a shrug and a sigh, Sam sinks further into a seat in the back row and closes his eyes, managing to drown out the saccharine voice of the counselor and the whispered consultation of two kids in the row ahead of him who seem to be planning some kind of impromptu service for Kyle.

 

The day is marked by similar maudlin excesses, girls bursting into tears during their discussion of the American liberation of concentration camps in World War II, and mixed groups of students gathered under the stairs and in obscure corners, Kyle’s death making them forget momentarily their social differences.

 

  1. What he and Dean grew up knowing, they’re only just now learning first-hand.



  
Sam’s outside of it, and he feels more alone than he has in a long time, since before he and Dean started whatever you’d call the thing they have.  In this, as in so many other things, he’s ahead of the learning curve.

 

The whole day is shrouded in a pall of uncertainty, the normal routine broken by the delayed start, by the way kids keep getting called out to meet with the counselor, by the teachers themselves, who seem uncertain how to deal with what’s happened.

 

They have Mrs. Restler again for English, and she, at least, seems more or less unaffected, posting the assignment on the board and passing out a review worksheet, which Sam does with relief, happy to have something more or less routine to focus on.

 

The feeling, unfortunately, doesn’t last. 

 

Though the school has already announced the cancellation of May Dance that had been scheduled for that night, the town itself is going ahead with the usual Festival ceremonies on Saturday night:  the burning of the symbolic old crop and the crowning of the May King and Queen.  Between periods, Sam catches snippets of angry dialogue, blowhards from the football team talking about burning down the bandstand, other kids suggesting a sit-in to protest.  Sam swears he hears the word “bomb” from a shady crowd known around school as “The Militia.”

 

He skips AP Chem and heads home to warn Dean, who he finds in the kitchen on the phone.  Dean holds up a finger, and Sam nods, puts his bookbag in the living room, pads back into the kitchen, eyes on Dean’s face, trying to figure out from his brother’s end of the conversation who it is Dean’s talking to.

 

“Really?  Well, I’m sure that was special for him.  And again, I’m so sorry.  Kyle’s going to be missed.  Yes.  Yes, ma’am.  No, no that’s okay.  I’ll see you on Monday.  Thank you, ma’am.  Thanks.  Bye now.”

 

“Kyle’s mom?”  Sam asks before the phone is back on the hook.

 

Dean shakes his head, “Aunt.”

 

“What’d you find out?”

 

Dean opens the fridge, gets out a beer, raises an eyebrow at Sam, who shakes his head.  He’s not in the mood, even if it is Friday, and they usually have beer and pizza.

 

Once Dean’s seated with his open bottle and has gestured Sam into the seat across from him, he explains.  “Kyle’s aunt was the last.  I managed to talk to Marty Reynolds, Debbie’s husband, today.  And I spoke to Jerry McRandall, too.”

 

Sam opens his mouth to ask, but Dean waves him to silence.

 

“Turns out all three of them had been to the carnival this week.”

 

Again, Sam opens his mouth.  There probably isn’t a person in the town who hasn’t attended the carnival at least once.

 

Dean beats him to the protest, though.  “And all three of ‘em had tarot readings with Zarah.”

 

“Son of a bitch—it _is_ her!”  
  


Dean nods around the neck of the bottle.  “I think so.”

 

“We’ve gotta stop her, Dean.  She could set this whole town on fire by the end of the festival at this rate.”  Sam proceeds to fill Dean in on what he’d overheard in the hallways that afternoon.  “We have to do something tonight,” he insists, almost pleading.

 

But Dean won’t be moved.  “We don’t know what we’re dealin’ with, Sammy.  Can’t just go in there and kill her if we don’t know what she is.  Could be the cards are cursed and she doesn’t even know it.  We have to find out more.”

 

“But, Dean—“

 

“No, Sam.  It’s not as simple as a salt and burn.  We should call dad.”

 

As reluctant as Sam is to agree, he knows Dean’s right, and he watches while Dean dials the answering service, waiting for his brother to leave their emergency code to let their father know he has to call back as soon as he can.

 

But Dean doesn’t say anything.  Sam sees his brother’s face darken, sees him tighten his hand on the receiver, and then he’s hanging up and turning back toward the table with an unreadable expression on his face.

 

“Is everything okay?” Sam asks, sinking feeling in his belly making his words come out a little breathless.  “Is Dad—?”

 

“He’s fine.  He just can’t be reached for a few more days.  Said he’ll be back by next Friday, latest.  Said he’ll be out of touch.”

 

Of course, John Winchester didn’t say it in those words.  Dean’s translating the family code for Sam’s benefit.

 

Sam clenches his teeth against an unexpected sense of abandonment, refusing to think about how Sunday is his birthday, telling himself it’s better this way—more time for him and Dean to celebrate in their own special way.

 

“So we’ll figure it out on our own, then,” he says at last, tone defiant, though the one he wants to hear it is nowhere near enough to answer.

 

“Yeah,” Dean answers, but he doesn’t sound convinced.

  
“We should go back there tonight and see if we can find more out about Zarah.”

 

Dean nods distractedly.

 

“Dean?”

 

“Yeah, okay.  But you have to be careful, Sam.  You can’t get into trouble while Dad’s out of town.  And we don’t know what this bitch is, yet.  She could be really dangerous.”

 

“You could call Uncle Bobby,” Sam suggests, wishing Dean didn’t look so grim.

 

Dean looks like he’s considering Sam’s idea for a moment, but then he shakes his head.  “Nah, better not.  Him and Dad had a falling out awhile back.  Don’t want to stir up trouble.”

 

Sam reflects that if their father put as much energy into their family as he does into alienating other people, they might all be better off, an idea he doesn’t share with Dean.

 

Instead, he says, “I’m going to change.  We eating in?”

 

Dean seems to shake off his darkness, smiling at Sam like Sam’s said something dumb. “It’s Friday, Sam.”

 

Dean orders while Sam changes, and by the time dinner’s on the table, he’s managed to finish his US History homework and gotten a couple of problems into the weekend Calc review.

 

The carnival is busy, Sam’s surprised to see, though not as heavily attended by people in his age group as it might otherwise have been.  He remarks on it to Dean, who says, “Yeah, probably planning a revolution,” in a half-joking tone that makes Sam say, “Shut up,” in the time-honored tone of brothers everywhere.

 

A couple of riggers recognize Dean and watch him with menacing eyes.  Sam knows Dean has noticed, but his brother plays it cool, strolling the midway like he owns it.

 

When they get to the far edge, where the attractions tents stand, a couple of men emerge from the shadow of a generator trailer to step into the brothers’ path.

 

“Where do you think you’re going?”  One of them, a tall, skinny guy with more hair than teeth, asks, punctuating his question with a stream of yellow tobacco juice aimed between Dean’s boots.

 

“Last time I checked, this was a public place,” Dean observes.  “We’re going to the freak show.  The _other_ freak show,” he clarifies, giving the smile that’s launched a thousand bar fights.

 

Either they misunderstand Dean or they aren’t actually listening, though, because the other guy, shorter and heavier, with a spiderweb tattoo on his sagging throat, says, “We don’t have a freak show, asshole.”

 

Dean snickers.  “You looked in the mirror lately?”

 

Sam rolls his eyes and curses Dean silently even as he shifts his weight to his heels and prepares for the inevitable confrontation.

 

Saggy is poised on his toes, about to rush them, when a voice from behind Sam and Dean says, “You bothering my guests, Larry, Don?”

 

Sam looks over his shoulder to see a tall woman with an improbable hourglass figure, draped in a spangled blue dress and sporting a towering black hairdo that defies gravity.  It’s held in place with what looks like a tiara made of twinkling lights.

 

He glances at Dean and sees the familiarity of recognition on his brother’s face, and like that, Sam knows who has come along to “rescue” them.

 

“Elena,” Dean says.  “I was just looking for you.”

 

Sam returns his attention to the two stooges, who are shuffling uncertainly and casting foolishly hopeful looks at the busty woman in the gravity-defying gown.

 

“Sorry, ‘lena,” the taller one says before they both skulk away, swallowed by the exhaust of the generator.

 

“Dean, you didn’t tell me you had a brother who was so handsome,” Elena Electrica purrs, putting a hand on Sam’s arm.  Her fingernails are impossibly long and painted electric blue.  “Lucky genes,” she says, managing to make it sound suggestive.

 

Sam swallows nervously and darts a look at Dean, who is giving the woman his best long-suffering brother look. 

 

“Well, he doesn’t get out much,” Dean explains, sidling closer to her.  Elena shifts her grip from Sam to Dean, and Sam has to suppress the urge to push her away from Dean.

 

She smells of something cloying and floral.  Up close, he can see the lines of her heavy stage make-up doing nothing to compliment her features, which have seen the better side of thirty-five, he thinks.

 

Dean doesn’t appear at all thrown by her age, however, and Sam grimaces and takes a step back.  “I’ll just go…check out that thing we talked about,” he says, trying to find an excuse to get away.

 

“No way, kid.  You have to get your sleep.  Big day tomorrow.”  Dean’s eyes bore into Sam’s, telling him in no uncertain terms that he’s not going after Zarah by himself.  “Why don’t you take the car?”  Dean offers him the keys.  “And don’t wait up.”

 

“Uh…” Sam’s mind is caught between total disbelief that Dean’s offering the keys to his beloved Impala to Sam, who’s only got a learner’s permit—in Oklahoma—and complete denial that his brother is suggesting going off with the cougar currently running her claws up Dean’s tee-shirt clad chest.

 

“Go on, Sam.  Take ‘em.”  Dean’s eyes telegraph his intentions, giving Sam no room to argue.

 

“But…”

 

“Go.”  Dean makes it a command and then turns with an embarrassed kids-these-days grimace to Elena.  “He’s sort of clingy,” he apologizes.

  
Elena simpers.

 

Sam snatches the keys before he can be humiliated further and turns away without another word, since none of them would be polite even for the dubious company of the carnival performer.

 

He hears Dean behind him saying, “Drive carefully.”  There’s more threat than worry in his voice, and Sam grits his teeth against the urge to tell Dean where he can shove his warning.

 

But Sam does drive carefully, not relishing the idea of being pulled over and arrested for driving without a license, and he makes it home without incident.  The house is dark and seems somehow emptier, despite the number of nights he’s spent there by himself in the months since they’d moved to Orchard Ridge.

 

He tries to concentrate on the remainder of the calculus review, but he has no luck, and the fourth time he has to erase the same proof, he gives up, throwing his pencil across the room and slamming his book down on the scarred coffee table in front of the couch.

 

He channel surfs for twenty minutes, finding nothing remotely interesting to watch, and finally gives up, tossing the remote in the same general direction as the ill-fated pencil.

 

For a long time, he sits in the dimness of the room’s only light and stares at the emptiness of television screen, at the stained low-pile rug, at the edge of the table, chewed by some ghost pet Sam tries to imagine and can’t.

 

He can’t imagine that anyone ever lived in this house and was happy.  And with that thought and a disgusted snort, Sam gets up and goes to the bathroom and then gets ready for bed.  He’s not fooling himself when he lies down on his bed; he doesn’t think for a second he’s actually going to sleep.  But he figures he should go through the motions, especially since he has the SATs first thing in the morning.

 

That makes him anxious, which makes him angry at Dean for staying out late, which makes him wonder what Dean is doing right then, which makes him angrier still.  His heart rate kicks up, and Sam discovers that he’s beating his closed fist against the wall in an increasingly frantic rhythm.  When he realizes what he’s doing, he stops, but it doesn’t keep his heart from tripping over itself or trying to climb up his throat and out onto his tongue.

 

Sam trusts Dean.  He does.  He tells himself this to calm the sharp pulses his heart kicks through his veins and the roil of acid in his stomach.

 

Watching the red digital minutes cycle around the hours, though, Sam has to admit to his doubts.  He wonders if Dean’s doing it on purpose, to punish Sam for taking the SATs tomorrow.  At this rate, he’s not going to get any sleep and he’ll be next to worthless for them.  Plus, Dean’s supposed to drive him there.

 

That thought fuels some nice, cleansing anger, but it doesn’t last.

 

By two a.m., Sam has turned the lights on and is sitting with his pillow behind him, propped against the headboard, abandoning any pretense of trying to sleep.

 

It’s almost three when he hears the Impala’s throb through the thin wall of the bedroom. 

 

The front door harbingers Dean’s arrival, his heavy boot treads on the hallway carpet preceding him into the room.  He stops in the doorway, eyes on Sam. “Hey, you’re still up.”

 

Sam can smell beer and cheap perfume from where he sits.  He narrows his eyes at his brother, so angry that he can’t for long seconds formulate a coherent response.

 

“You okay?” 

 

Dean’s concern comes off phony, and Sam finds his tongue after all.

 

“What do you care?  You were busy getting cozy with that cheap carny whore.  God, I can smell her from here.”

 

Emotions play quickly over his Dean’s face—surprise followed by understanding followed by amusement.

 

“You jealous, Sammy?”

 

And that’s exactly the wrong approach to take.  Sam’s exhausted and feels betrayed, even if he knows in his heart of hearts that Dean would never cheat on him.

 

“No, Dean, I’m not jealous.  I’m pissed that you’d forget the job in favor of playing the poonhound with that…woman.”

 

By the way he spits the last word, it might as well be something worse.

 

Dean’s expression shifts to anger of his own, and he takes two steps into the room.  “For your information, smart ass, I _was_ working the job.  Elena’s been part of the show for years.  She knows a lot about Zarah, and she wasn’t shy about sharing it.”

“That’s not all she was sharing, I’m sure.”

 

“You _are_ jealous.  That’s what this is really about,” Dean crows.  The gloating overpowers Sam’s sense of self-preservation then.

 

“I’m not fucking _jealous_ , Dean.  I’m fucking _pissed_.”  Sam climbs out of bed and advances until there’s only a foot of space between them.  “I have the SATs tomorrow, and instead of getting a good night’s sleep, like the books all recommend, I’m waiting up for my big brother to wander in stinking of whores and booze.  The big brother who’s supposed to drive me there tomorrow, by the way.  Lot of good the seventy bucks I paid for the test is going to do me now.  I’ll be too tired to get the scores I need.”

 

He knows he’s whining, can hear the petulance in his own voice, hates himself for doing it and Dean for inspiring it.

 

Dean seems uncertain how to respond to Sam’s attitude, but he falls back on the usual Winchester bluff.

 

“Blow ‘em off,” Dean dismisses.

 

“No, Dean.  I have to take them.”

 

“So make them up later.  I’ll write you an excuse.”  And now he sounds conciliatory, and maybe a little baffled.  It just makes Sam angrier, that Dean doesn’t understand, maybe can’t understand, why this test is so important to him.

 

“It doesn’t work that way, Dean.  I have to be there!” 

 

“How can you even worry about the SATs, Sam?  People are dying! We have to help them if we can.”  And now Dean sounds like his big brother of old, full of righteousness and a little condescension, like Sam’s too young to get his priorities straight.

 

Like Dad sounds when he’s getting into it with Sam.

 

“I’ll help them after the exam, Dean.  It only takes a few hours.”  He isn’t pleading now, isn’t trying to make Dean understand. 

 

“A few hours might be the difference between life and death, and you know it.”  Sam tries to ignore Dean’s astonishment, the tone in his brother’s voice that suggests he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing, that Sam might choose the SATs over saving someone’s life.

 

And that’s not what Sam wants, means.  But damn it, Dean always makes it sound so simple, so black and white.  Maybe that’s the way it is for his brother.  Maybe the world is made up of evil he kills and normal he ignores.  But…

 

“I can’t help that, Dean.  I can’t just put my life on hold every time something evil rears its ugly head.  The world’s full of evil, and if I do that—“

 

Sam falls silent like he realizes how he intended that sentence to end, how it might sound.  His feelings, his exhaustion, Dean’s stubborn insistence on being right—they’ve all carried him to the edge of something Sam’s not ready to say out loud, not even ready to admit fully to himself.

 

With his eyes, he begs Dean to let it go. 

 

Dean’s a Winchester, and he’s not afraid of anything.  “If you do that then _what_ , Sam?  What?”

 

“If I do that, I’ll never have a normal life.”

 

If Sam had struck Dean in the face, his brother couldn’t look more surprised.

 

“Normal?  What’s _normal_ , Sam?”  But Dean doesn’t sound so much outraged or hurt as he does confused and lost, and Sam’s stomach drops to his knees even as his heart tries to hammer its way through his ribcage.

 

“Dean,” he starts, pleading now, maybe for time to reverse itself so he can take back the words.  Maybe for Dean to see it his way.  Why can’t his brother just understand?  It isn’t about him.  He loves Dean.  It’s about—

 

“Is this because Dad’s always in your face, Sam?  Is that it?  Dad’s just worried about you.  You know that.  He just wants you to be safe.”

 

“It’s not just about Dad, Dean.  It’s about—“

 

Another silence filled in with unspoken things.

  
Dean’s eyes shutter.  Sam watches the careful mask his brother puts when he wants to hide his feelings, hates that he’s the one putting that wall between them.  But it doesn’t stop him from saying the next thing, even if a part of him is screaming, _Shut up shut up shutupshutupshutup_.

 

“It’s about having a life besides this.  Besides rented houses and hunting and—“

 

“Fucking your brother.”

 

“No!”  Sam takes a desperate step toward Dean, hand up like he wants to cling to his brother, hold him in place, beg him for the words he can’t seem to find to make this right again.  But he doesn’t touch him, only stands there, inches apart, begging Dean to see what Sam’s trying to say.

 

“It’s not you, Dean.  It’s not about that.  About us.  I _love_ you.  I love being with you.  God, you know that.  You’re the one thing that’s always right in my life, the one constant, no matter where we end up or what we’re doing.  It’s just…I don’t know if I can live like this forever, Dean.  What happens when we get older, huh?  You ever thought about that?  What happens to us, to _this_ , when we’re hunting together, out on the road, with Dad’s friends or whatever.  Everyone knows we’re brothers, Dean.  We can’t hide it forever.  We have to—“

 

“What?”  And this time, Dean’s voice is just quiet, like he’s already surrendered his will to Sam.

 

“We have to plan, is all I’m saying.  If I’m at college, you can come visit me.  After a year, I can get an apartment, and we can stay together whenever you want.  You can live with me.  We can—“

 

“We can _what_ , Sam?  What, huh?  Buy a dog?  Adopt a kid?  You think that’s how it’s going to go for us?  For me?  That’s not my life, Sam, and it’s not yours either.”

 

“It could be.” 

 

Sam hates how he sounds, like a little boy who’s just been told his dream was only that, the product of sleeping too late, too long.

 

Dean shakes his head once and then again, not so much in denial as to be doing something, it seems, like he doesn’t realize he’s moving at all.

 

“No, Sam.  We can’t have that life.  You know what’s out there.  You know what the world is really like.  How can you turn your back on what you know and just pretend it’s all okay?”

 

“People do it every day, Dean.”  And now he just sounds childish, and he hates that, too.  In his head, when he’d play this conversation over, it never went like this.  In his head, he was eloquent and persuasive, and Dean saw his way.  Maybe he was angry for awhile, sure, but he’d come around, agree to Sam’s terms, and they’d be happy.  They’d be free of their father and happy.

 

“No, Sam, people _don’t_.  People like us don’t get to have normal lives.  We get to protect the normal people who live normal lives in their normal suburbs with their normal families.  If they didn’t have us, they’d die, Sam, like the people around us are dying right now.  What we do _counts_ , Sam.  It’s important.  More important than college and a career and all of that so-called normal shit.”

 

“Well, I want it anyway,” Sam answers.  He knows he’s being stupid and stubborn, but he can’t seem to stop pushing.  If Dean would only see it his way, if he’d only take a minute to think about it, he’d know—

 

“It’s always about what you want, isn’t it, Sam?”  And Dean sounds bitter but also resigned, like he knew the script before they started the lines.

 

Sam is startled by how much it hurts to hear Dean say that, as if Sam’s been a burden for Dean’s whole life. 

 

“Is that what you really think of me, Dean?”

 

But Dean’s done.  Sam can see it in the set of his brother’s shoulders, in the way the muscle of his jaw jumps rhythmically.  Dean rubs a hand over his face, looking suddenly ten years older, and says, “I’m goin’ to bed, Sam.  You want a ride to the test tomorrow?”

 

Like that’s it.  Like things hadn’t just been said that could never be unsaid.

 

Sam nods, almost relieved to have the routine of Winchester denial to resort to when all else fails.  When everything fails.

 

“Yeah, thanks.  Can we leave at 7:00, swing by the diner for breakfast?”

 

“Sure, Sammy,” Dean answers, putting on a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

 

In the dark, with Dean’s breath sighing out of him in the immediate moments before sleep, Sam whispers, “I love you,” knowing that Dean can hear him.

 

“Love you, too,” Dean answers across the darkness that divides them.

 

Sam’s still awake when his alarm goes off at 6:15.

 

Breakfast is a quiet affair, Sam exhausted, Dean overly careful.  They make pointless conversation about nothing of import, and Dean drops him off in front of the testing site fifteen minutes before Sam has to be in his seat, number two pencil ready.

 

As he’s getting out, Dean says, “What time will you be done?”

 

“Can you pick me up at noon?”

 

Dean’s answer is a nod, and Sam figures that’s all he’s going to get.

 

Then, “Good luck,” Dean offers as Sam gets out and turns to close the door. 

 

“Thanks,” Sam says, and he can hear in his own voice a certain bleakness and the tiredness that drags at his heels all the way down the long tiled hall to the gym of a neighboring private school, where the test is being offered.

 

Sam’s been through the PSATs twice, so there are no surprises in the instructions.  The first few sections are easy enough, but as the minutes change to hours, he feels himself flagging, his brain slowing down under the burden of questions that seem to be completely irrelevant to his life, to any life he knows.

 

_Complete the analogy:  Silver:Werewolves::Salt:______________ seems a lot more applicable to Sam than Mother:Daughter::Father: __________.

 

Stupid sample questions.

 

Still, he completes each section well ahead of the allotted time, checks his answers, makes sure all his bubbles are filled in good and dark, and eventually the exam is over and he can escape the echoing room for the relative comfort of the rainy late morning sky.

 

The Impala crouches at the curb, her most recent wax job repelling raindrops, the wipers thwapping out a comforting rhythm.  Sam thinks he might fall asleep before they get home.

 

“We’re going to the carnival,” Dean says as they pull away from the curb.  Sam stifles a groan.

 

“I’ve figured it out, Sammy,” and Sam picks up on his brother’s excitement, rouses himself enough to focus on Dean’s animated face.  His brother looks relieved and triumphant, a mystery combination until his next words.

 

“It was the tarot reader making us crazy, Sam.”

 

“What?”  His head is full of pressure and his eyes full of sand, or Sam might have a more coherent response.

 

“All of the victims who went batshit—your teacher, Debbie Reynolds, the barber, Kyle.  They had readings with Zarah.  She’s the connection. I figure she puts the whammy on them through the cards.  That’s why we’ve been arguing so much.  It’s some kind of disruption spell or a curse.  Or maybe she worships some chaos god or something.”

 

Sam has caught up enough to wonder about how quick Dean is to credit a witch with their recent relationship troubles, but he lets it go, almost relieved to have something else to blame, even if he feels uneasiness seeping into his stomach at the lie.

 

“We’ve got to get over there and stop her before she fucks up any more lives.”

 

Dean sounds eager, like it’s personal for him, which Sam supposes it is if the witch did, in fact, curse them.

 

“Dean, if she’s a powerful witch, shouldn’t we go in armed?”  
  


“Sammy, I’m hurt.”  But his smile belies his words as he jerks his thumb in the direction of the trunk.  “This ain’t my first rodeo. Everything we need’s back there.”

 

“But if we don’t know what we’re up against—“

 

“Would you relax?  I’ve got it covered.  This bitch is goin’ down.”

 

“Dean, we can’t just kill her in the middle of the day in the middle of a busy carnival.”

 

“No,” Dean says with exaggerated patience, “But we can stop her from seeing any more clients.”

 

“And what if she…I don’t know, curses us again or something?”

 

“Would you relax?  I’ve got it covered.”  Dean reaches over to the floor behind Sam’s seat and retrieves a plastic bag, which he throws unceremoniously on Sam’s lap.

  
“Put one on.”

 

Sam opens the bag, wrinkling his nose at the stench that rolls out with every motion of the plastic.  He finds two mojo bags made of black cloth and hanging from leather thongs.

 

“What’s in these?  They reek!”

 

“Anti-witch shit.  Suck it up and put yours on.  We’re almost there.”

 

Indeed, traffic has slowed to a crawl as people search for prime parking spots.  Dean drifts past the carnival gates and heads a little out of town, coasting onto the shoulder well away from the most distant of parked cars.

 

“Isn’t this a little far to drag an unwilling witch?”  Doubt makes his voice sound strange to his ears.

 

“Not gonna bring her here, Sammy.  I’ve got a better place to keep her until it gets dark.”

 

Sudden suspicion spins Sam around to face Dean. “No,” he says.

 

Dean doesn’t even pretend not to catch on.  “C’mon, Sam.  It’s perfect.  No one will think to look in Elena’s trailer for Zarah.”

 

“No way, Dean.  What if Elena comes back?”

Dean smiles smugly.  “Not a problem.”  
  
Sam wants to smash the smirk off his brother’s face.  Instead, he turns and starts stalking up the road toward the carnival.

 

“Hey!” Dean protests, slamming the trunk.  Sam doesn’t turn around to see if Dean needs help carrying the weapons.  Let him deal with it, since he’s _got it covered_.

 

Maybe it is a curse of some kind, Sam reflects, cooling down as he works off his anger in long, ground-eating strides.  He passes a family—a father, mother, two kids, one of them whining—and thinks about what his life would be like if he’d grown up like that.  It makes him shiver a little, the possibility, because then he and Dean wouldn’t be…they probably wouldn’t have ever… They’re…

 

“You going to sulk your way into her tent, or are you planning to take some of these?”

 

Sam turns to see that Dean’s caught up with him and is waggling the heavy duffle in Sam’s direction.

  
“Yeah, okay,” he says quietly, passing between two parked cars and crossing a narrow ditch to round the far side of a big tree.

 

Dean follows, opening the duffle out of sight of the families and couples and groups of kids heading obliviously for an afternoon of fun.

 

Dean hands Sam a gun, which he checks with quick and careful expertise before stowing in the back of his pants, under the tail of his hoodie.  Holy water is next, though that raises Sam’s eyebrows.

  
Dean catches the look, shrugs.  “Can’t hurt.”

 

“This isn’t the _Wizard of Oz_ , Dean,” Sam notes dryly, but he stows the water in the front pouch of his sweatshirt.

 

Next is a brass bell, clapper for now muffled with cotton, and then an iron railroad spike, filed to a wicked point at one end.  Sam suppresses a shudder as he puts that carefully in his jeans pocket.

 

Once they’ve geared up, they stow the duffle in the high grass under the bottom rail of a pasture fence, cross the ditch, and rejoin the steady stream of people moving like cattle toward the waiting carnival.

 

The wide aisles between midway games and rides are churned to mud by hundreds of sneakered and booted feet.  There’s an air over the whole place of excitement and tension in equal parts.  Herds of adolescents move in fluid clots from one place to the next, some of them scowling like the suburban families are an affront to their angst, others laughing in that wild way teens have when they know strangers are listening.

 

Sam’s skittish, startles at a sudden motion on the periphery, sees that it’s just a balloon let go from a crying kid.

 

Dean laughs a little next to him, hardly a laugh, more an expulsion of breath, and says, “Take it easy.”

 

Sam nods, but his jaw is tight, his teeth aching from the strain.  He wants to be anywhere but here.

 

A couple of teens he recognizes drift by, nod at Sam, who nods back and tries a smile.  He has a feeling it’s more sickly than sincere, if the weird looks he gets in return are any indication.  The others move off, though, which serves his purpose, and soon enough he and Dean are standing a few tents away from Madame Zeleska’s tent.

 

There’s a line of people waiting for readings, but Dean doesn’t seem to notice or care, shouldering his way past the guy nearest the tent flap to barge right in.

  
The middle-aged woman in the chair turns around, face morphing from surprise to anger at the intrusion.  Zarah, though, only gathers in the cards and says, “I’m sorry.  I have to cut this short.  But your reading is on the house, and if you come back later, I’ll finish it for free.”  
  
Mollified—and visibly uneasy—the woman gets up, grabs her purse, and huffs out.  Zarah rises, and Sam senses more than sees Dean reach for a weapon.

  
“Relax,” Zarah says in her deep, flowing voice.  “I’m just going to put out the ‘closed’ sign.  I assume this will take a little while?”

 

Sam shifts to keep the woman in sight as she moves toward the door, while Dean moves to stand right near the flap, obviously intending to grab her if the reader attempts to flee.

 

She doesn’t.

  
When the sign is up and she’s said a few cheerful, apologetic words to the disappointed crowd outside, she returns to her seat and sinks into it with a quizzical smile, busying her hands with the cards.

 

“Don’t,” Dean warns, and she raises her hands in the universal sign of surrender and then puts them flat on the table to either side of the neatly stacked deck of worn cards.

 

“What’s the problem?” she asks, but she doesn’t seem especially curious.  In fact, she’s wearing an amused smirk that suggests she’s already well aware of their mission.  Aware of it and completely unconcerned by potential outcomes.

 

Sam tenses, one hand reaching inside his hoodie pocket for the muffled bell.

 

“You know damn well what the problem is,” Dean answers, voice that low modulation that suggests carefully controlled anger.

  
Zarah’s face doesn’t change except for something in the eyes, a wariness.  Sam thinks, _Good._   Worried is better.

 

“I haven’t done anything to warrant a visit from the Brothers Winchester,” the reader answers, one hand twitching a little on the dark velvet cloth, as though she wants to handle the cards.  It’s a tell, and it makes Sam breathe a little easier to see it.  It means she’s nervous…which is good, since Sam’s pretty sure they haven’t used their actual names in front of her, and he knows for a fact Dean gave Elena an alias.

 

“Bullshit.”  Dean isn’t wasting breath or focus on explanations.  He draws from his own pocket the filed iron spike.  “Want to test that theory?”

 

Zarah laughs, and it isn’t a bluff.  Sam sees her relax a little, the way her hands still once more. 

“She’s not a witch,” he says, and Dean nods but doesn’t take his eyes from the reader.

 

“Hand ‘em over.  Slow.”

 

The smile flees her face, and Zarah’s shoulders tense, her hands twitching again.  Dean’s barked, “Don’t,” stops them a scant inch from the cards.

 

“I can’t very well hand them to you if I can’t touch them.”  Her voice is lower now, mocking and ugly, the smirk on her lips self-assured. 

 

Sam abandons the bell and reaches for his gun.

 

“Sam,” Dean says, and Sam knows what his brother wants.  He takes a step forward, barrel trained on Zarah, and gathers up one edge of the tablecloth with his free hand.  The reader doesn’t move.

 

“Lift your hands,” Dean commands, but she doesn’t.  Instead, she stares at Dean, licks her lips, lets into her eyes something ancient that makes Sam have to think hard about standing his ground.  He wants to be a mile away from those eyes if they turn on him.

 

Dean withstands it, though, sees and calls her look with his own ugly smirk.  “Do it,” he orders, stowing the spike in favor of his gun.

 

“Are you going to shoot me with all of these people around?  Really?  I could scream ‘rape’ right now and bring half a dozen riggers in here to help me.  How would you explain yourself to the police, I wonder?”

 

She’s got them.  They can’t afford a scene, not if they want to take care of her before she can hurt anyone else.

 

“Sam,” Dean says again, and he understands.  Stowing his gun back in his waistband, Sam reaches down and grasps the chair-back, yanks it backwards, legs catching and juddering on the wet earth beneath them, hauling her bodily away from the table.  The tablecloth beneath her hands comes with her, sliding toward the earth, and the cards teeter on the edge of the table for a breathless second before they fall, scattering in the mud, some face up, some face down, spilling their fatal colors against the dull brown of the scarred earth at her feet.

 

She jerks forward with a little cry, like she’s trying to rescue something precious, but Sam stops her with a forearm across her chest, hand over her mouth to prevent her from calling for help or casting a curse.  He’s pretty sure she’s not actually a witch, but it pays to be over-cautious in this business.

 

Dean uses the material of the tablecloth to gather up the fallen cards.  He’s rough with them, using the barrel of his gun to flip stray cards onto the now soiled cloth.  Sam feels Zarah straining under his hands to get free.

 

When the cards are bundled into the tight bunch of Dean’s left fist, Sam feels Zarah relax, as if all the energy has left her.  He’s not fooled into letting her go, though, until Dean says, “Sam,” in a different tone of voice, one with a chaser of alarm in it.

 

Sam lets her go and rounds the chair to look at her.  Zarah’s eyes are open, but they aren’t tracking motion, only staring unfocused.  Her lips part with a sigh and she shudders like something is draining from her or she’s about to have a seizure.

Sam reaches forward to hold her in the chair, but Dean stops him with his outstretched gun. 

  
“Wait,” his brother says.  Sam does as he’s told, hands closing and opening reflexively, helpless with wanting to do something but being unsure of what help he can be.

 

The shaking increases until he’s sure she’s going to fall, and then just as suddenly as it began, it stops.  Her eyes fall close on a drawn-out sigh, and he feels his belly freeze with the certainty that she’s dead.

  
Then she opens her eyes and sits up, looks from Sam to Dean and back to Sam, eyes cloudy with confusion before they clear, as if a fog has been shredded by strong wind.

 

“You…,” she tries, falters, shakes her head.  “Destroy them,” she whispers, as if it’s a strain to say the words.

 

Dean drops the bundle in a muddy patch between the table and the door, pulls a small can of butane out of a pocket, drenches the bundle, and then discards the butane for a pack of matches, which he hands to Sam, who lights a match, uses it to ignite the pack, and drops them all onto the fabric.

 

There’s the whoosh-thump of ignition, and then the bundle burns in earnest. 

 

The air inside the tent is suddenly alive with grey tendrils of smoke that seem to take on physical form, pilfering fingers sliding over their bodies, attempting entrance to their noses and mouths.

 

Zarah rises unsteadily from the chair, her face wild with fear, and Sam helps her, following Dean out the door into the fresh, clean air of late afternoon.

 

There’s a scream, and a shadow seems to pass through the top of the reader’s tent and out into daylight.

 

Then it dissipates, the watery sun of another partly cloudy day obliterating the ugliness.

 

All three of them take in a deep breath at the same moment and release it with nearly identical laughs of relief.

 

A few minutes later, Dean cautiously edges open the tent flap and stands aside, waiting.  Nothing comes out except the sharp, acrid odor of burned fabric.

 

They enter cautiously, Sam last.  He’s surprised to find the room in order.  It feels like there should be evidence that something terrible has just been erased from the face of the earth.

 

Zarah sinks back into her chair, knees still shaky, and Sam and Dean follow suit, pulling client chairs around to either side of her so neither has his back to the door.

 

“You want to tell me what the hell that was?” Dean asks, his gentle tone belying the harsh words.

 

Zarah shakes her head.  “I don’t know, exactly.  When I took over the business from Madame Zeleska, she told me that I should use her cards.  She said they were lucky, and that as long as I used them, I couldn’t go wrong.  I thought it was a little weird at the time—usually readers like to keep their cards, you know?  But I figured to humor her the first week, when she was still hanging around the carnival sort of keeping an eye on me.

 

At first, I didn’t notice anything different about the cards.  The readings were all just the way they would’ve been with my deck or any deck.

 

And then one day…I don’t know.”  Zarah stops, shakes her head, stares toward the ceiling of the tent like maybe the words are there just waiting for her to find them.  “One day it was different.  I felt…stronger.  Like the things I was saying were absolutely guaranteed to come true.  I didn’t think it was anything bad.  I figured I was just comfortable in the role, you know?  But then, things started to happen…bad things.  I didn’t notice it in every town—sometimes we didn’t stay that long, just a weekend or a few days.  But anywhere we stayed for awhile, I heard rumors of things happening to people.  I knew.  I knew, and I tried to get rid of the cards.  I threw them in a dumpster one night after the carnival closed.  The next morning, they were on my table, waiting.  Another time, I buried them just before we pulled up stakes and left for the next town.

 

When I set up my tent, I found the cards in the trunk where I keep the tablecloth and lamp.”

 

Zarah stops, drops her head, staring at her hands, her head shaking a little in rhythmic denial.

 

“It’s okay,” Sam says.  He can see tears forming at the corners of her eyes, watches as a single stream makes its way down her face.

 

“I even tried to use different cards.  When you came for your reading, I was using my own deck.  But after you left, I took a break, and when I came back, my cards were gone and Madame Zeleska’s were back where they always were.”

 

Sam heard it, but Dean gets to it first.

  
“Wait.  You mean, you didn’t use the cursed cards on us?”

 

Zarah shakes her head.  “No.  No, I didn’t.  Sometimes the cards would…let me go, I guess?  Sometimes they’d let me use other decks.  I tried.  I really did.  But they never stayed gone for long.  And the longer I used them, the less like myself I felt.  It was like I was…possessed…or something.  It was terrible.”

 

The reader covers her eyes with her hands while Sam looks anywhere but at his brother sitting across the table from him.

 

“Well…I think you’re safe now,” Dean answers.  “We’ll come back tomorrow before the carnival shuts down just to make sure you’re okay, but I’m pretty sure the curse ended when we burned the cards.”

 

Zarah nods, her face tear-damp but suffused with a grateful light as they rise and turn head toward the tent flap.

 

“I don’t know how to thank you,” she says then, rising herself, though she sways in place, obviously weak with her ordeal.  “But if you wanted another reading, I could—“

 

“No!” Sam says at the same time as Dean. 

 

“No,” Dean finishes, “That’s okay.  We’re…good.” 

 

They back out of the tent, only turning around when the flaps have closed behind them.

 

They don’t say a word all the way to the car, Dean leaving Sam’s side long enough to retrieve the duffle and then returning just as wordlessly to fall in beside him.

 

Dean turns the Impala around and heads back through the dense pedestrian crowds, all of them moving toward the Festival fire and the May Crowning to come.  Sam thinks fleetingly of the season and its meaning, of how it’s supposed to be a time of renewal.

 

Instead, he feels old in ways he never has before. 

 

They arrive back at home as the sun is setting, and neither of them says a word about dinner.  Instead, they flop with two feet of couch between them, Dean surfing through the channels, Sam considering if it’s too early to go to bed.

 

When full dark has finally crept across the beaten carpet, Sam says, “I think I’ll hit the sack,” and Dean says, “Okay,” without any inflection.

 

Despite being light-headed with exhaustion, Sam can’t sleep immediately.  He plays over and over again in his head the reader’s fateful words.  It wasn’t the cards that made them argue.  It wasn’t a curse that had them spewing hurtful words.

 

When he does finally sleep, it’s only to be plagued by dreams, indefinite but sweat-inducing, so that he wakes with a start in the deep well of night, damp sheets tangled around his legs, breath gasping out of him as though he’s been chased out of sleep.

 

“You okay?” Dean sounds concerned, his voice in the dark sounds somehow intimate, and Sam takes in a long breath and holds it before finally answering.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Liar.”  Dean’s response is followed immediately by the sounds of his bedsprings creaking, and then he’s a heavier presence in the darkness at Sam’s bedside.

 

Sam scoots toward the wall to let Dean in, and Dean slides under the covers and wraps his arms around Sam, drawing him close, breathing, “Happy birthday, Sammy,” into his hair.

  
Sam cranes his head up, chin on Dean’s shoulder, to make out the red numbers on his clock:  2:43.

 

He relaxes into Dean’s embrace, rubs his nose against Dean’s collarbone a couple of times, and says, quite clearly, “I love you, Dean.”

  
Dean’s arms tighten as if in reflex, and he answers low against Sam’s ear.  “I love you, too, Sammy.  I always will.”

 

Sam nods his understanding against Dean’s chest and settles his head against Dean’s arm.

 

“Get some more sleep, little brother.  You’ll need your energy for tomorrow’s surprise.”

 

Sleepily, Sam asks, “Does it involve spanking?”

 

Against his thigh, he feels a nudge, and Sam knows he has his answer.  Dean’s filthy laugh follows him down into much better dreams.

 

 


End file.
